
Class 



h Rj & 5 



Book .J.5T 



PRESENTED BY 



South America Today 



Soda! and Religious Movement 
as observed on a trip to the 
Southern Continent in 1921 



SAMUEL GUY INMAN 

Executive Secretary 

ComraiRee on Cooperation in Latin America 



Committee on Cooperation in Latin America 
25 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK 



South America Today 



Social and Religious Movements 
as observed on a trip to the 
Southern Continent in 1921 



SAMUEL, GUY INMAN 
Executive Secretary 
Committee on Cooperation in Latin America 



Committee on Cooperation in Latin America 

25 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK 






TABLE OF CONTliN I'S 



' 



INTRODUCTION 



Page 
1 



I. THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 



II. THE, FEMINIST MOVEMENT 



22 



III. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT 36 



IV. THE MOVEMENT TO MODERNIZE EDUCATION 43 



V. RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 



I Rft 
"ubUelMr 

API? |0 1923 



INTRODUCTION 

Political revolution in South America is being succeeded 
by social revolution. This outstanding impression is being 
borne in upon a present day visitor to that great continent 
in whatever direction he may turn. Social revloution is 
expressed in four marked movements, which are ushering in 
the break from that conservatism of the past, which even 
yesterday seemed destined to preserve for many years its 
strong hold. These movements which overlap one another 
and receive aid from many other less prominent influences 
are the labor movement, the feminist movement, the temper- 
ance movement and the movement for modernizing educa- 
tion. 

I do not wish to give the impression that these new move- 
ments have become predominant in the social life of South 
America. The old conservative customs and modes of 
thought that have prevailed for centuries cannot be thrown 
off in a few years. It will be a long time before the great in- 
ertia of the masses and the strongly organized opposition can 
be overcome. But certainly all these movements will rapidly 
take on force, and the opportunity to guide them to a right, 
instead of a wrong, use presents a great challenge to the 
friends of South America. 

In calling attention to their developments, my purpose is 
not by any means to treat them exhaustively. I desire simply 
to bring to my readers a few facts and experiences of my 
trip to South America from March to July of 1921, with the 
hope that they will impress all interested, as they have me, 
with the rapidly changing conditions in South America. 
Most of my readers will be those particularly interested in 
the religious progress of the Southern continent. Believing, 
as I do, that these social problems are intimately bound up 
with the religious situation, it has seemed to me that it would 
he more helpful at this time to direct attention to the general 
situation, than to give a survey of Christian work such as 
has been published following other visits. 



I. 

THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
The new labor movement is the most astounding of all 
the remarkable social influences now so rapidly transforming 
South America. The pitiable condition of labor in the past 
in Latin America is generally well known and need not be 
treated here. The two words used to describe the laborer are 
sufficient to indicate his state, "peon," denoting a financial 
obligation to an employer not possible to shake loose, and 
"roto," a broken, ragged fellow. Historically, these condi- 
tions were established when the Spanish hidalgos were given 
grants of land and allowed to force the Indians to labor for 
them. Country labor was always kept in debt and town labor 
consisted largely of the personal servants of rich families. 
Such public work as was carried on was generally done by 
prisoners. The relationship between "amo" and "peon" was 
more or less patriarchal. No such thing as "labor unrest" 
was ever heard of. Even today in many a country or great 
region of Latin America the laborer, even when his material 
state leaves much to be desired from a sanitary or progressive 
viewpoint, appears to be unaware that there is anything 
wrong; I have seen the Indian living under conditions into 
which comfort apparently rarely entered, under which he 
never owned anything but the barest hut for shelter and the 
poorest rags as clothes and, with his food limited to the 
scantest dishes both in quantity and variety, had no per- 
ceptible pleasure in life except when he took some strong 
alcoholic drink at a "fiesta." But unrest there was none, since 
the idea of social revolt and of the securing of better con- 
ditions through revolt was absent. But sooner or later the 
industrial age had to invade Latin America. The personal 
relationship between employer and employee were severed. 
Workmen began to come together in large numbers in cities 
where they saw a new life, and began to hear of the outside 
world and its economic problems. When workmen first 
heard of the strike as practised by their brothers in Europe 
and North America, and essayed to invoke it, they were met 
with a show of military force and compelled to desist. A 
strike was a revolution. Even when the government did not 



drive them back to work, they had no idea of sticking to their 
demands until favorable action was forced. 

It was often amusing to read the manifestos which they 
issued as they returned to their jobs, expressing their satis- 
faction that they had publicly protested against a certain in- 
justice, and thus had saved their "dignidad." Evidently, they 
considered their dignity as much more important than the 
still unsettled injustice, against which they struck. Strangely 
enough, the cause, not only of these first strikes, but even 
of some of the most important and far-reaching recent labor 
struggles, has not been economic but personal. With the in- 
dividualistic Latin hours and wages are not as important as 
are questions of the discharge of friends or the employment 
of enemies. 

The awakening of the workingman has not been equally 
marked in all countries of South America. Labor in the 
tropical part of the continent is still far from any idea of 
organization for the purpose of forcing better conditions. In 
countries like Peru, where labor is almost entirely Indian, 
peonage is still largely the rule. There was a recent uprising of 
Indian miners, but they were soon forced back to their work. 
One hears about labor organizations in certain industrial 
centers near Lima, and in the petroleum, sugar and mining 
districts. But when investigation is made, it is found that 
these are merely mutual societies, in which the workmen are 
associated for insurance and social purposes, but do not pre- 
tend to work for better contracts with their employers. A 
more pessimistic group can hardly be found. They are tired 
of following political revolutionists who promise everything 
before getting a position, but forget all when victorious. They 
realize full well that they are powerless before the combina- 
tion of owner, priest and government. The only friends they 
seem to recognize are the students of the University, who 
are doing really sacrifical work in teaching night classes at- 
tended by hundreds of working people in and around the 
capital. 

Faint signs of an approaching awakening are seen how- 
ever in the little sheets which these organizations are pub- 
lishing. The following, translated freely from some of the 
pitiable little labor papers purchased at a newsstand in Lima, 
show their keen desire for a deliverance of which they have 
heard something but understand nothing. 



"Listen, Brother to my notes of red with which my song is 
vibrating, I sing to life, — death to death ! I go planting roses 
made of love and truth. Anarchism is my liberating thought 
I am the Word which rises in humanity's darkest night and 
scatters all its pain. Lister, Sister, it is time to rise and greet 
the morning light which kisses our darkest suffering! 

"Arise ! all the poor of the Universe ! Stand ! Slaves with- 
out bread ! Shout, all together ! Long live 'la Internacional !* 
Away with all the impediments that block the proletariat 
from the enjoyment of our riches ! Down with the parasites 
of labor, Long live 'la internacional !' " 

Far different from these incoherent cries, heard in the night 
in Peru, are the strong voices in some of the other countries 
threateningly demanding new rights and privileges. In the 
past year, in the more progressive South American countries 
the working class has passed definitely from the status of 
an inert mass of humanity, to be bought as cheaply as pos- 
sible by foreign and domestic capitalists, and has become a 
class-conscious body of workingmen, a political force to be 
reckoned with. 

There has been a welter of strikes on every hand, accom- 
panied usually by violence and stressing the recognition of 
the union to a greater extent than more money or shorter 
hours. The cost of living has been a source of discontent 
everywhere. For the South American countries no reliable 
index numbers exist, but price levels, in a number of coun- 
tries, are probably slightly above those in the United States. 
Depreciated currency, fluctuating exchange values and 
the refusal of the propertied classes to pay their fair share 
of the taxes have increased the pressure even more. In 
Paraguay even the storekeepers shut up shop and joined the 
ranks of the strikers. South America has a large floating 
population of workers, many of whom, before the war, came and 
went between Europe and the East Coast countries in a regu- 
lar seasonal flux. The governments, particularly in Argen- 
tina and Brazil, have arrested literally hundreds of suspected 
foreigner leaders, usually Spaniards or Russians, deporting 
or holding them indefinitely in jail. None of these leaders, 
however, has become an outstanding figure to which a per- 
sonality or even a name can be attached. Their success must 
have been due in large part to a discontent lying everywhere 
close to the surface, which flared up in the wheatfields and 



the back reaches of the quebracho forests as easily as along 
the crowded waterfronts of the cities. 

Argentina 

Argentina has been the center of the strongest radical influ- 
ence." Not only the workmen but the students and professors 
of the universities seem to have largely gone over to the 
soviet position. The most important labor organization of 
the country is the "Federacion Obrera Regional Argentina," or 
as it is popular^ known by its initials, The "F. O. R. A." Dr. 
Alfredo Palacios, professor of sociology in the University of 
Buenos Aires, in an address before the university has given 
a full account of this remarkable organization, which now has 
some 300,000 members. The following facts about the or- 
ganization are taken from that lecture : 

The investigation of the organization of the F. O. R. A. 
affords a real surprise to those who have claimed that the 
labor movement in Argentina is purely a matter of profes- 
sional agitators. The F. O. R. A. was organized on the 25th 
of May, 1901. In 1915 there were 51 federations in its mem- 
bership, with $20,521 collected as dues. In 1919 there were 
530 federations, whose membership amounted to over 300,000 
and paid in as dues the sum of $488,549. At the beginning of 
the organization in 1905 it was decided to propagate anarchi- 
cal communism. The following resolution was passed: "The 
Fifth Congress of the F. O. R. A., recognizing the philosoph- 
ical principles which have been the basis for the organization 
of workmen's federations, declares : It approves and recom- 
mends to all its adherents the inculcation among the work- 
men of the philosophical and economic doctrine of anarchicaL 
communism. This education prohibiting satisfaction in the 
mere obtaining of the rule of eight hours will complete eman- 
cipation and bring about the social evolution which is de- 
sired." The Congress of 1915, however, changed the basic 
rule of the organization, abandoning syndicalism. The reso- 
lution which changed the basis of the F. O. R. A. in 1915 pro- 
vided that : "The F. O. R. A. will not pronounce itself offi- 
cially on the side of any philosophical system or determined 
theories whose propaganda according to the autonomy of the 
individual is not directed nor limited, but on the contrary the 
most tolerant discussion of scientific and philosophical 
themes according to the different modes of thought of fed- 



erated workmen is permitted. The F. O. R. A. recognizes 
that the present economic system is characterized by the ex- 
istence of two classes, the capitalists, the possessors of the 
means of work, and workmen, who create social riches ; that 
that state is a tangible and coercive expression of the social 
domination which capital exercises, and therefore that the 
federations propose to make accessible to the workmen all 
the scientific and social contributions toward production." 
The F. O. R. A. is made up only of the syndicated organiza- 
tions of salaried workmen who accept the class struggle and 
have as their object the organization of the working classes 
in order to effect their moral, economic and intellectual bet- 
terment. The F. O. R. A. membership is kept from being 
padded by a requirement that each member of every federated 
organization pay a certain definite amount of dues. 

The port strike of 1916 marks the definite beginning of the 
F. O. R. A.'s strength. The intervention of the federated so- 
cieties in that strike was decisive. Inspector Nicholson points 
out the conditions of longshoremen in Buenos Aires as fol- 
lows : "Men worked without fixed hours. The twelve hours 
of other times had been increased to sixteen, which in some 
places, as at Montevideo, was increased until men began at 
4.30 a. m. and quit at 11 p. m. On the steamboats, firemen 
were paid 55 pesos, seamen 45, with overtime at 25 cents an 
hour." When the Department of Public Works offered medi- 
ation, the shipping companies rejected it, but the seamen's 
federation accepted. Later the arbitration of the president of 
the. Republic, who appointed as his personal representative 
the chief of police of Buenos Aires, was accepted. The de- 
cision of the arbitrator gave to the workmen 90 to 95 per cent, 
of their demands. 

The F. O. R. A. has recently occupied itself with the cost of 
living. Its report says that the ways to reduce the cost of 
living are, first, by workmen demanding the raising of their 
salaries, and, second, by their using every possible means to 
agitate this raising of salary. In the nation-wide railroad 
strike the F. O. R. A. also took an important part. When 
Buenos Aires was threatened with starvation, because of the 
strike, the Minister of Public Works petitioned the officials 
of this organization to allow food trains to be run, and this 
was granted under certain conditions. The F. O. R. A. thus 
reports the settlement of this strike, the greatest strike in 



the history of the proletariat settled favorably through 
the workmen. It was important because of the num- 
ber of workmen involved, because of the principles at stake 
and because of its significance in class struggle. The rail- 
road workmen had, during the twenty-four days of the con- 
flict, the most intense sympathy of all the working classes. 
They realized, in this conflict between capital and labor, that 
the patient work of many years given to organization was 
foeing tested and they were resolved to offer every assistance. 
This was not necessary, for the railroad workers co-operated 
closely and came out of the struggle stronger than ever. 
From now on the owners will feel deeply troubled by this 
new organization which is destined to control the railroads 
at no distant date. 

The strike of stevedores in the northern city of Posadas in 
1918 gave opportunity for the intervention of the F. O. R. A. 
in the district of the Alto Parana. There the workmen are 
really slaves, since they can never repay the amounts that are 
first advanced to them on salary account. If they demand 
liberty, they are chastized. If they flee to the forest, they are 
hunted like animals. A copy of the contract with these labor- 
ers provides that: "Each peon who abandons work without per- 
mission of the patron, absenting himself from the establish- 
ment, incurs a responsibility for damages, in which case he 
will be considered as a fugitive and the patron is authorized 
to pursue him and to compel him to comply with his contract. 
If the peon loses his time-book, he must submit himself to 
the data contained in the firm's books. The peon must work 
every day that the patron designates, Sundays, holidays, or 
rainy days not excepted, as also he must work at night, if 
the inclemency of the weather has not permitted him to do 
so during the day. If, for lack of desire, he pretends sickness 
in order not to work, especially on Sunday, he will pay 50 
cents a day for his meals, besides losing his salary." 

In 1918, when the workmen of Posadas finally declared a 
strike, the F. O. R. A. sent a commissioner to study the sit- 
uation, aided in the better organization of the workmen, and 
ultimately secured better wages and better treatment all 
around. After ten years of work under conditions as above 
described, the peons are physically deformed and their bodies 
wasted, according to the commissioner, who reports that it 
is very common for those who return from the Alto Parana 



to have tuberculosis, which progresses very rapidly and is 
generally without cure, causing death before the individual is 
30 years of age. 

The F. O. R. A. has also made interesting studies concern- 
ing the laborers on the great estancieros of Argentina, assist- 
ing in the organization of these workmen. Another part of 
their program has been the investigation of the condition of 
renters of country lands, where they have found great abuses. 
The F. O. R. A. has sustained a continuous fight against legis- 
lation unfavorable to workingmen and has advocated in sea- 
son and out of season the right of labor to strike, which right 
is now fully recognized by the law. 

Immigration 

The question of immigration has attracted the attention of the 
organization and it has pronounced against the fomenting of an 
artificial immigration by "capital which considers the country as a 
factory." It proposes to maintain relationships with European 
workmen by which proper arrangements for immigration may be 
made. Organic relationships are maintained with the "Inter- 
nacional." 

The strikes referred to in this account of the F. O. R. A. 
are only a few of those which have caused Buenos Aires to 
suffer more from labor troubles in the last two years than 
probably any other city in the world. At certain times, all 
business has been suspended for days and only armed men 
and machine guns have been seen on the streets. 

The biggest labor fight of the year in South America, and 
the most important one internationally, was the year-long strike 
of the Argentine maritime workers, the "Federacion Obrera 
Maritima." This strike tied up completely for a whole year 
all the Mihanovich fleet, twenty or more ships owned by the 
Argentina Navigation Company. From this company the 
strike spread to the boats of the towing company and the 
ships that served the central products market of Buenos 
Aires. This paralyzed traffic on the River Plate between Ar- 
gentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, and all Argentine coastal 
traffic. The president of Argentina charged the company 
with "intransigency" and the company issued in September 
a long defense, saying in part: 

"We must place it upon record that this company has never 
made any question as to whether its personnel belongs or does 

8 



not belong to a trades union, and it has always selected its 
employees solely on their qualifications. . . . your Excellency 
will perceive that it would be monstrous for us to expel the 
present crews of the Uruguayan ships (the ships registered 
under the Uruguayan flag) in order to replace them by fed- 
erated crews. We have no other questions at issue with our 
personnel on strike; no requests for higher salaries, nor any 
complaints as to working hours or conditions, meals, or any 
other point. We have borne with patience the lack of dis- 
cipline on board and also the boycott against cargoes as or- 
dained by the F. O. Maritima and as at present practiced in 
the port of Buenos Aires. We are aware of no other cause of 
conflict than those stated." 

The main strike began February, 1920, though there had 
been trouble since the port strikes of the year before, over the 
refusal of the company to discharge from its shipyard work- 
men who continued to work during the strikes at shipyards 
in Buenos Aires. The struggle meant the tying up of many 
foreign vessels that were loading with grain for export. The 
government endeavored to settle the port difficulties by fiscal- 
izing the port, taking over the boats and operating them prac- 
tically as navy tugs. 

But fiscalization was really a victory for the workmen. 
They established a practical soviet at the ports, controlled 
shipping conditions and levied a tax for the support of their 
federation on every article handled by them. The Mihano- 
vich Company, after tying up their boats for a year, had to 
finally give in and accept practically all the demands of the 
Federation. When a difficulty arose among the crew of the 
United States steamer "Martha Washington," as she lay in the 
harbor of Buenos Aires, resulting in the discharge of several 
men, the Federation took up their cause with such persistency 
that the steamship was held in port for tw r o months. It was 
only after the matter threatened a diplomatic break between 
the governments of the two countries that the Argentina gov- 
ernment exercised sufficient force to compel the Federation 
to permit the loading and sailing of the ship. 

In May of 1921 the situation reached a climax. A cordon 
of soldiers was thrown around the wharfs and even the cap- 
tain of a ship had to have a permit in order to return from 
land to his ship. All foreign traffic was tied up for weeks. 
The writer was able to get out of the city only by taking a 



river boat to Montevideo, pulling his own trunk on board, as 
no workmen were allowed to touch baggage. When, in des- 
peration, the business men threatened to close all wholesale 
houses and the steamship agents threatened to have Buenos 
Aires eliminated as a port of call for their vessels, the gov- 
ernment forced a break in the strike. Some six hundred rad- 
icals were arrested in a few days. As a protest, a strike of 
all affiliated unions was called, but failed to materialize. 
Normal conditions, after more than two years of terrific in- 
dustrial war, are now gradually being restored in the city of 
Buenos Aires. (September, 1921.) 

Another important group that shared in the general dis- 
turbance was that of the railroad workers. After several 
strikes an agreement was reached between the managers of 
all the important railway companies and the representatives 
of the operatives. The agreement was comprehensive, includ- 
ing forty articles that cover every possible question of wages 
and working conditions. It is the first important collective 
contract in the country and was signed by representatives ot 
the two sides after twenty meetings held under the auspices 
of the Minister of Public Works. On the following Monday 
after the agreement was signed, a committee, speaking for 
the managements of the various roads, called on the Minister 
of Public Works to inform him that they had voluntarily ac- 
corded increases in wages to all employes, but more especially 
to the lower-paid classes, on the ground that present wages, 
though much above pre-war levels, could not adequately meet 
increased living costs. The contemplated increases would 
total about $10,000,000 for all companies concerned. 

The strikes most interesting in their implications, perhaps, were 
those that took place among the agricultural workers against 
some of the big land companies. The agricultural strikes were 
accompanied by strikes among the stevedores at the grain ter- 
minals and among the railway men. They then spread to all 
classes of labor in the up-river and interior cities. In Rosario 
In the middle of March, stevedores, carters, chauffeurs, bagmen 
and milkmen were all out at the same time. The workers in the 
state oil fields at Comodore Rivadavia also went out, partly on 
a sympathly strike, partly for better working conditions. The 
Forestal Land Company's annual report describes the strike of 
their workers for recognition of the union : 

"On December 12 a telegram was received from the workmen 

10 I 



at the various factories giving us twenty-four hours in which to 
reinstate certain men who had been dismissed. On Sunday, 
December 14, strikes broke out at all the factories, but it was 
only at Tartagal that conditions assumed a revolutionary aspect. 
Some damage was done to our property, and a considerable 
amount of logs and extract was burned. A detachment of police 
guards arrived upon the scene, to be reinforced later on by a 
considerable body of troops. Telegraph lines were cut and re- 
mained cut for a long period ; a large number of our cattle were 
rounded up and slaughtered. The losses incurred have been 
written off. The strike came to an end on January 11, 1921. Since 
that time labor has been very unsettled throughout the Argentine, 
and as recently as April 21 last, sudden further trouble occurred 
at our Guillermina factory, when the local manager was killed 
by workmen." 

The strike was officially ended after four weeks of negotiations 
and a property loss of $550,000. The company refused through- 
out to treat with "outside elements," but consented to the election 
of committees of the workingmen at each factory to treat with 
the local managers on all matters pertaining to wages and work- 
ing conditions. 

Buenos Aires, a city of more than 1,500,000 inhabitants and 
with more than thirty daily newspapers in many languages was 
recently without newspapers or even bulletins for six days, bring- 
ing back the pioneer days when the population awaited the arrival 
of sailing ships to learn what was going on elsewhere. The people 
appeared to accept the situation complacently as merely another 
phase of the many labor troubles which had beset the city in past 
months. Fifteen of the principal publishers decided to close 
down their plants indefinitely after the refusal of union printers 
to set the advertisement of a boycotted department store. The 
smaller papers were forced to suspend publication because they 
could no longer use the presses of the larger papers. Determined 
that they should not be the only sufferers, the publishers stopped 
posting news dispatches on the bulletin boards. The boards were 
covered with this notice : "This paper suspended indefinitely 
because of the united fight for liberty of the press." The strike 
of street car employes, which was in progress for a week, appar- 
ently caused more inconvenience than the lack of newspapers. The 
lack of disorder in spite of the unusual situation was very notice- 
able. Public officials and the newspaper publishers made a special 

11 



effort to suppress incendiary news. Business was greatly un- 
settled. Two hundred firms were at the same time laced with 
differences with their employes. 

In the midst of all this disturbance, with wholesale arrests by 
the police and the activities of local "patriotic" societies, general 
elections for Congress were held in Argentina. They resulted in 
a very decided victory for the Radical party, whose head, Irygoyen, 
is now President of the Republic, with Socialists in second place. 
Of 150,000 straight party votes cast in the city of Buenos Aires, 
55,000 were Radical, 49,000 were Socialist, and only 33,000 
Progressive-Democrat, the conservative party that has ruled so 
long. Immediately following the elections the government raided 
certain suspected centers of Radical activity in Buenos Aires and 
the suburbs, arrested 150 "anarchists," and doubled the guards 
about the city, alleging that they had frustrated a communist 
conspiracy to set up a soviet in South America. Had they taken 
measures to break the river strike, they would doubtless have re- 
ceived more thanks from the business men of the city, and the 
outside world to whom they must look for financial aid. 



Chile 

Chile has had almost as many labor difficulties as Argentina. 
The development in Chile does not show, however, anything like 
as much foreign influence. Being on the west coast, it is more 
removed from Europe. Chile has always been one of the most 
homogeneous of Latin American lands. It has developed its own 
national life, which is probably more marked than that of any 
other country on the continent. Since the beginning of the repub- 
lic there have been very few revolutions. The country has been 
ruled largely by an oligarchy of about a hundred families who have 
been both the owners of the land and the directors of the political 
and commercial life of the country. The Chilean "roto" has been 
showing a great deal of restlessness for the last decade. Many 
people have expected the laboring classes to lead in a revolution 
which would overthrow the capitalistic regime. The shedding of 
blood has happily been averted by a recent political uprising which 
is a most remarkable demonstration of the power of Latin Ameri- 
cans to accomplish reforms by civic means. 

Due to the unsettled financial conditions throughout the world 
and the resulting unsteadiness of the business situation, the labor- 

12 



ing classes joined the Liberal Party in its nomination last April, of 
Arturo Alessandri for presidential candidate. Their platform 
advocated currency reform, the income tax, protection of national 
industries from foreign aggression, various solutions for social 
evils, the education of women and children, prohibition, parlia- 
mentary reforms, and the separation of Church and State. The 
Conservatives, made up chiefly of the landowners and property 
holders, fought hard to prevent the election of the Liberal candi- 
date. After a hot contest, in which the workingmen of the large 
cities gave many "demonstrations" for xMessandri and made it 
quite evident that there would be trouble should there be an 
attempt to inaugurate the opposing candidate, the election of Mr. 
Alessandri was confirmed by Congress. 

The power to awaken a popular, interest in politics and draw the 
ardent support of his party must be attributed first of all to the 
personality of Alessandri himself. He is "fearless and resolute, 
generous and eloquent." From his first successful appearance in 
reform movement in Iquique, when he was chosen to lead the 
attempt to wipe out its local "Tammany," Mr. Alessandri has 
been marked for the great opportunity which now looms before 
him. 

Of the reform in international politics for which the Chileans 
are calling, and which Alessandri has already promised to comply 
with, are the following: "Decentralization of the administrative 
power of the government, giving to the provinces the right to 
select their own officials and dispose of their public revenue; the 
stabilizing of exchange ; the enfranchisement of women ; the sep- 
aration of Church and State ; extending and perfecting the pro- 
tection of labor ; the creation of portfolios of labor and agriculture 
in the Cabinet ; the introduction of vocational education. Ales- 
sandri believes that the European war has taught that the nations 
of the American continent have now one more reason to unify 
their effort toward progress, and to draw closer those moral and 
cultural ties which count even more than material intercourse. 

President Alessandri is encountering great opposition from the 
oligarchy which has been accustomed to exploit the laboring classes 
and is now going as far as it dares in checking the president's pro- 
posed reforms. A test of strength between the president and the 
senate was made during my recent visit to Santiago. When the 
senate refused to approve the recommendation of one of the presi- 
dent's 'cabinet, the cabinet, following custom, resigned. The presi- 
dent refused to accept the resignation saying that the senate must 

13 



give a definite vote of censure before he would accept such resig- 
nations. The laboring men immediately staged a large demonstra- 
tion in favor of the president, not only marching through the 
streets but standing before his home in relays for some two days 
in a continuous demonstration of friendship, while some of the 
party made sortes to the homes of certain senators which they 
attacked as indicative of their dissatisfaction with the senate's 
tying the hands of the president. The situation was very tense 
and if the president, who is a very popular man with the common 
people, had given them any encouragement whatever, they would 
have treated the reactionary element very roughly. 

There is probably no other country in the world where the daily 
press is giving so much space to labor movements as in Chile at 
present. Most of the large dailies (and the Chilean press is par- 
ticularly progressive) give a whole page to labor every day and 
often items under this heading are continued on other pages. 
Entering the country by steamer from the North, one lands in 
the midst of this labor trouble in cities like Iquique and Antofa- 
gasta, centers of the nitrate region. The nitrate business has gone 
all to pieces since the close of the war. There is a great deal of 
unemployment and an attempt to greatly reduce wages has been 
made. Some foreign agitators have come to this district to assist 
the laboring men in their organized protests. Strikes are the 
order of the day. Twelve separate walk-outs were reported in 
Antofogasta during my visit in June. 

For two years labor troubles have been particularly keen. In 
Santiago and the vicinity a general strike was called in sympathy 
with thirty-eight striking brewery drivers. A longshoremen's 
strike at Valparaiso and Antofogasta tied up coastal services badly. 
The railroad men in the north walked out, but were given a raise 
in pay. The native workmen at the Braden copper mines struck 
for recognition of their union. It is reported that out of 6,000 
men 2,000 were put on special trains and shipped half south and 
half north. 

The strikes in the coal mines have been the most serious. The 
miners asked for an average increase of 40 per cent. The coal 
barons of Chile are barons in the feudal sense of the word, making 
what even North American capitalists call "unconscionable pro- 
fits." The large majority of the miners live in company houses 
and trade at company stores. The representative of the Chilean 
Department of Labor who investigated conditions reported that 
the men made the equivalent of $1.60 to $2.20 a day. They are 

14 



paid, however, not in currency but in company values that are 
liquidated only about five times a year. The working day is from 
six to six and children of from eight to sixteen years are employed 
for 34 to 80 cents a day. These/men asked for an eight-hour day, 
payments in currency, recognition of the union and better police 
regulations. The owners were obdurate. President Alessandri 
finally took the matter in hand and the question has probably been 
settled by this time. 



Brazil 
In Brazil labor disturbances have not been as general as in 
Argentina and Chile, but they have by no means been absent. 
The most violent troubles recently occurred in the State of S. 
Paulo . A detailed report was made at the end of last September by 
Police Delegate Tyrso Martins, to the Secretary of Justice and 
Public Safety. The document evidences much prejudice against 
the strikers, but contains a continuous account of those long, com- 
plicated disturbances. The document gives a resume of the dis- 
turbances which began as far back as a year ago last May. The 
movement was originally based, the Delegate states, "upon a 
genuine labor grievance, and sought an object undoubtedly rea- 
sonable," but gradually losing sight of its worthy object degener- 
ated into grave disturbances of public order. Everything seems 
to have begun with a strike of part of the operatives of the Crespi 
cotton mill. For several days "the strikers maintained order, the 
police, on their part, complying scrupulously with their duty," pre- 
serving for the strikers (gra vistas) their right to hold meetings, 
while on the other hand they guaranteed the property of the own- 
ers and the right of the non-striking employees to go on working. 
But soon, instigated "by a group of conscienceless anarchists" the 
strikers began to abandon pacific resistance, to interfere violently 
with the workers and even to assail the police when attempts were 
made to prevent street conflicts between the strikers and workers. 
Senhor Martins reminds the Secretary that at this point "your 
Excellency spontaneously offered to receive the strikers and the 
masters, trying to reconcile the interests of both." But efforts 
came to nothing. "Against the simplest preventive acts of the 
police, such as the arrest of hysterical persons, the operatives 
rushed to the doors of the police headquarters, and, insulting the 
authorities, loudly demanded the freedom of those whom they 
called their companions." 

15 



On a certain day the crowd shot at a sub-delegate of police; a 
violent scene took place, and in the fray one of the leaders of the 
strikers, who had recently been expelled from the Argentine for 
anarchistic propaganda, was killed. The strikers laid his death 
to the door of the police and on the day of his funeral a great 
crowd of workmen, in, whose midst the coffin was carried, came to 
lay it at the door of the police headquarters. The mob that 
formed soon got out of control, began to sack property, "profes- 
sional agitators inciting the workmen to 'expropriation'." Ware- 
houses and freight cars were attacked and rioting and robbery 
became the order of the day. In three awful days it was reported 
that nearly a thousand people were killed by machine guns of the 
police. The Governor of the state then undertook to ameliorate 
conditions of the workers. He also requested the S. Paulo repre- 
sentatives in the Federal Congress to seek the passage of measures 
to remedy the evils affecting the laboring classes. An increase of 
wages was granted and strikers returned to work. But the spirit 
continued ugly. The pretext for another strike was found when 
a workman employed in a machinery house damaged a valuable 
piece of mechanism and was dismissed. His companions struck 
and labor in other departments was forcibly prevented. The com- 
pany tried to replace the striking men with native-born Brazilians, 
but these were violently prevented from working. About the 
same time a strike began in an embroidery factory, because some 
of the employees refused to join the union. 

This "Centro" secured the adhesion of 1,400 workers in a weav- 
mill of Ypirango, who, as one of their demands, requested the 
abrogation of the long-standing regulation that no one must smoke 
in the factory! The directors naturally refused and the strikers 
destroyed the notice exhibiting the rule in the workshops. Next 
the "Centro" tried to secure their principal object, the adhesion of 
the employees of the S. Paulo and Sorocabana railways. When, a 
little later, the company dismissed half a score of men, a threat of 
a strike was made if the company refused to take back the dis- 
missed men. The officials then inquired of the state police whether 
the safety of the railroad property could be guaranteed. "From 
me the gentlemen received the only reply which, as Delegate of 
your Excellency, in a state whose progress is the; pride of Brazil, I 
could give : 'The government of the State of S. Paulo is prepared 
not only to guarantee property, but to repress, at the first sign, 
any attempt to disturb public order !' " 

Measures were at once taken ; a contingent of Brazilian marines 

16 



was called and the military police guarded the railroad shops and 
line. The railroad company then announced that they would abide 
by their decision of dismissal. 

To appreciate the difficult situation it should be added that one- 
third of the population of the State of S. Paulo are Italians, 
numbering one million ; that there are small colonies of at least a 
dozen different nationalities besides the native Brazilian popula- 
tion, including Russians, Icelanders and Japanese; and that the 
state has during the last fifty years developed with extraordinary 
swiftness not only in her agriculture, but also manufacturing. 
With a proportionally vast alien population, speaking their own 
tongues and publishing newspapers in those tongues, S. Paulo has 
her problems in the midst of a wonderful material success. A 
really free country, conciliatory, offering a genuine welcome to 
newcomers, Brazil in general and S. Paulo in particular, faces the 
question of getting the best from the immigrant without antagon- 
izing or coercing him. 



Uruguay 
Uruguay has had her share of labor troubles but has escaped 
some of the violence experienced by her sister republic across the 
river, because she has adopted liberal economic legislation. Dur- 
ing the past several years she has made many experiments along 
the lines of socialism. She even passed a law providing for the 
payment of workmen while they were out on strike. One of her 
most recent pieces of legislation is a workmen's accident law, 
whose liberal provisions I give here as an illustration of the way 
that Uruguay is leading in labor legislation. The law provides that 
the manager of an industry or various sorts of work mentioned 
shall be held responsible for all accidents to workmen when on 
duty. Workmen suffering from accidents during work have the 
right to indemnity. Workmen under the present law shall not 
have further rights against the industrial manager than those 
provided by this law. Workmen who receive a salary in excess of 
750 pesos a year may not obtain an indemnity rated upon a greater 
salary than this sum, which is fixed as the maximum for the calcu- 
lation of disability pensions. To have the right to indemnification 
the workman must have been incapacitated for work for more 
than seven days. The workman shall have the right to indemnifi- 
cation even when the accident occurred due to his carelessness in 
greater or less degree, or when it is caused by chance or superior 

17 



force, unless these be outside the work itself. Beside the action 
against the manager, the victim of the accident, or his heirs, has 
the right of damages against other persons responsible for the 
accident. The indemnification from the third parties relieves the 
manager of his obligation for an equal sum. In case the accident 
has caused the death or permanent disability of the workman the 
indemnity will be paid as a pension. All contracts for work, which 
free the manager from responsibility for accidents to workmen 
are null and void. In case of temporary disability the workman 
will be entitled to half the salary being paid him at the time of the 
accident (provided that his incapacity lasts over seven days), to 
count from the eighth day after the accident. When the disability 
lasts over 30 days the indemnification shall be paid from the day 
of the accident. In the case of permanent disability the workman 
shall have the right to a life pension and in the case of death to an 
indemnification fixed in proportion to his salary. 



Paraguay 
Paraguayan labor, as far as it is connected with the shipping 
and packing business at least, has taken its cue from Argentina 
and has therefore been quite arbitrary and violent. For a year 
Asuncion was practically without passenger steamship service. 
One large steamship, which was about to be operated, in defiance 
of the labor union, was slipped out of the Asuncion harbor, right 
under the guns of the government gun boats and sunk. The 
danger run by the "innocent bystander" when one of the frequent 
"labor riots" is staged, was brought home to the writer during a 
recent street car strike in Asuncion. Walking with friends, as the 
only means of getting to a dinner party, about dusk one evening 
the rapid fire of something less than a thousand rifles was heard, 
seemingly just on the other side of the wall behind which we took 
protection. After five minutes the firing ceased and we went on 
to our friend's house. Curiously enough, the firing had appeared 
to be as close to them as it was to us and with great difficulty they 
calmed the native servants sufficiently for them to serve dinner. 
On returning later to the American, School, the teachers were sure 
that it had been an attack on the school, and friends at a nearby 
hotel were equally sure that it was in the front patio. We learned 
finally that it was a case of a tramway full of soldiers who were 
fired on by strikers, and who, dismounting, had chased the strikers, 

18 



firing promiscuously into the darkness with the hopes they might 
hit someone — presumably a striker. 

The host of the dinner party that evening, the manager of a 
twenty-million dollar North American packing adventure in Para- 
guay, which has since gone into bankruptcy, told us, among stories 
of other labor difficulties, about having had a beautiful yacht, built 
especially for the manager's inspection trips, tied up since the first 
week after its arrival because labor which knew nothing of the 
machinery, insisted on their exclusive right to run the boat. 



Ecuador 

Even in backward Ecuador a certain theoretic attention to indus- 
trial questions seems to be developing here and there. The follow- 
ing quotations from an address by a "son of the soil,"before a group 
of intellectuals, is an interesting side-light both on the interests of 
the group and on the oratorical ability, not seldom found, among 
the less favored classes of Latin America : 

"Courteously invited by the 'Sociedad Artistica e Industrial del 
Pichincha' to deliver this lecture, I was inclined to excuse myself, 
as I might have done, counseled by the belief that I have of the 
deficiency of my intellectual and oratorical ability but, in my 
anxiety to promote honorably the betterment of my country, and 
above all. desiring to remove baseless prejudices in respect of what 
has to do with certain conceptions of international economics, I 
did not hesitate at this moment of great universal expectation, to 
accept the invitation, in order to say to the great laboring masses 
that the hour has arrived for thinking seriously regarding the 
future destiny of the Ecuadorian people. 

"If you consider that my ideas are merely the result of a pro- 
found conviction that both the great political and the economic 
evolutions are usually initiated by the popular mass, it being from 
their bosom whence spring the broad movements and the most 
transcendent reforms, I doubt not you will give your benevolent 
attention to the words of a son of the soil. 

"There are two reasons that have had weight in impelling me to 
study the effects of commercial interchange between the United 
States and Latin America : first, the extraordinary growth which 
the former country's trade has achieved during the last four years, 
thanks to the gigantic and horrible war, and, second, the prospect 

19 



that is to be presented to the Hispano-American republics when 
the immense struggle shall have been ended, by whatever means. 

"I do not come gentlemen, to make apology for a great people. 
A people that has produced liebrators like Washington, economists 
like Franklin, poets like Longfellow, statesmen like Jefferson and 
Monroe, needs not the apology that can be made for it by the most 
obscure of its admirers. Its apology is its history ; its apology is in 
its works ; its apology is its own greatness. I do not come, more- 
over, to excuse it for the mistakes it may have made in the realm 
of its international relations, which have hindered the loyal and 
sincere approximation of the Hispano-American nations to con- 
stitute the great Pan American union that should guarantee the 
progress and sovereignty of all the Americas. These mistakes, 
however hurtful to the American cause, have been recognized and 
chivalrously repaired, as far as possible." 

The Pan American Federation of Labor, organized some three 
years ago, shows the endeavor of the American Federation of 
Labor to extend its help to the workmen of Latin America. This 
pan american organization has now held three important confer- 
ences, two in the United States and one in Mexico. Meeting thus 
in the North its influence has been limited largely to the North 
American continent. The American Federation of Labor has sent 
several deputations to South America, but I find that labor leaders 
in that continent are not very closely related with the leaders in 
the United States or Mexico. Delegates from Peru and other 
South American countries that have attended some of these Pan 
American Conferences have not been very representative of the 
labor organizations. The organizations in the less progressive 
countries, as has already been pointed out, are not yet developed 
to a point where they can appreciate the program of the American 
Federation of Labor. On the other hand, labor leaders in Argen- 
tina have no patience with the program of the federation in the 
United States, regarding it as entirely too conservative and accus- 
ing Mr. Gompers and his associates of being the tools of the 
capitalists. 

If the Pan American Federation of Labor is to really become a 
force in South America, it will have to give a great deal more time 
to the cultivation of the laboring men of that continent. There 
is undoubtedly a large field for the American Federation in help- 
ing the workmen of less advanced countries in organizing to secure 
their just rights and in providing a program for labor in countries 

20 



like Argentina, that will be much less radical and of more real 
benefit. 

In this brief narrative, no effort is made to cover the entire labor 
situation of South America, but only to show, by a few illustrations 
that the old days are rapidly passing and that South Americans 
and their friends must recognize that the labor question is destined 
to be for some time one of the continent's most important and 
pressing problems. 



II. 

THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT 
Five years ago, a gentleman of South America wrote in answer 
.to a query : "The new woman's movement has in many ways, 
happily enough, not touched the women of South America." He 
would surely not make such a statement today. 

The first cause of the awakening of the women of South Am- 
erica is found in the growing interest in the outside world, which 
all people on the southern continent have so remarkably developed 
in the last few years. The woman's movement first took form in 
a simple coming together of the higher class women for charitable 
purposes under the auspices of the state Church. In countries like 
Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, where the woman's movement is 
the strongest, they have been gradually developing independence 
from the Church and are now found to be working out their own 
problems. These are more largely concerned with social better- 
ment, community service, the education of the poor, etc., than they 
are in the securing of the vote for women, although the latter is 
the principal platform in the organization of several feminist 
societies. Dr. Jonghi, a well-known woman physician of Argen- 
tina and a leader in the feminist movement, thus describes the 
situation of women, inherited from Spain: 

"Spain has left her seal on everything. Her religion, her lan- 
guage, her customs, her social beliefs, are found in all lands south 
of the Rio Grande. Women have lived in this atmosphere and 
conservative spirit, bound to the old' traditions which have not per- 
mitted some of the South American countries to introduce any new 
ideas. However, the desire for betterment has broken this con- 
servative spirit in other South American countries, and feminism 
as a social rebellion, with all of its exaggerations, desires that it 
have a place assigned to it in the home, in the university, in busi- 
ness and in the professions, sciences and politics. The South 
American woman is a beautiful type of consecrated maternity, but 
her education is not sufficient to prepare her as a future citizen. 
Her devotion to her children is admirable and worthy of all praise, 
but she needs an education which will enable her to confront the 
problems of life. Let us take as an example the education that 
women receive in the Argentine Republic, since that is a country 

22 



which is working toward a new life and an interchange of intel- 
lectual ideas with the rest of the world. 

"Education is obligatory from the sixth to the fourteenth year, 
girls taking the same courses as boys. After that age the girl sel- 
dom attends school. Her parents are contented to complete her 
education with a few courses in music, painting, elocution and 
languages. Courses on domestic economy, if given, are short and 
impractical. She enters society at a very early age. She is ab- 
sorbed by light conversation and an ambition to make a favorable 
impression, and is sometimes attracted to philanthropic organiza- 
tions, generally of religious origin, and is surrounded by an entirely 
artificial atmosphere. The middle class of girls quite often con- 
tinue their studies by attending the national colleges, commercial 
and normal high schools, etc. The majority of these become 
teachers, dedicating themselves most completely to this profession. 
Others, with greater ambitions, enter the universities, and with a 
perseverance worthy of all praise, fight through their courses until 
they have become Doctors in Philosophy, in Letters, in Chemistry 
or in Pharmacy. A number of such women become physicians, 
attorneys and engineers. These are not natural ambitions, but are 
based on the desire to meet the exigencies of daily life. The work- 
ing woman ends her intellectual education in the primary school. 
At fourteen she is initiated into the factories or commercial houses. 
The Government has recently established night schools in order 
to help them continue their education. 

"Physical education is by no means satisfactory. Sport has 
become popular among a small circle of the cultured classes, but 
women of the middle and working classes have only enough spare 
time to secure the needed rest. There is to be noted, however, an 
attempt to secure playgrounds and parks, and some commercial 
houses are making worthyi endeavors to awaken among the women 
interest in sports. There are beginning to appear in the few public 
playgrounds some of the braver women. Excursions to the coun- 
try are not frequent. The Argentine woman lacks the liberty 
which the North American woman enjoys. She must have her 
parents or some member of the family always with her, which 
naturally is a detriment to her independent development. 

"When physical education is deficient, moral education needs 
special attention. The restrictions of liberty, an exaggerated pru- 
dence, the strict religious morality, the absence of friendship 
between men and women, the excessive vigilance of parents in 

23 



every detail of life, unfit the girl for the development of individual 
capacities and the meeting of the problems of life. The conse- 
quences of this education are easily seen. If woman is to be com- 
panion to man, this lack of equality ought to be eliminated." 

Let it be remembered that these observations on education apply 
to the advanced, not by any means to all South America. The 
women of the various countries are so different in their social 
status and in the amount of freedom they are allowed, that it is 
difficult to generalize, so it will be better to speak of the situation 
in each of the countries recently visited by the writer of these lines. 



Peru 
Peru is one of the most conservative countries in South America. 
It has retained more of the Spanish spirit than any other in 
America. If it were not for some half dozen brave women of 
Peru, one might say that there is no feminist movement in that 
country. Fortunately, there are these brave spirits who have con- 
tributed greatly, in spite of persecution, to the development of the 
Woman's Movement. A decade ago no one ever spoke of femin- 
ism in Lima except to poke fun at the English suffragettes. This 
the press did quite often. In 1910 the Feminist Congress met in 
Buenos Aires, and a young woman from Peru, Miss Maria J. 
Alvarado Rivera, contributed a paper which was published in one 
of the Lima dailies. This almost caused a scandal among the more 
conservative elements in the community. In 1912 Miss Alvarado 
was invited to deliver a lecture on this subject before the Geo- 
graphical Society. This brought to her aid a number of the most 
distinguished liberals of the city and resulted in the organization 
of a society known as "Evolution Femenina." The principles 
established by this society were the following : 

(a) An ample culture which will enable women to carry out 

efficaciously their mission. 

(b) Since the first need of a state is to develop motherhood, 

domestic sciences should constitute the basis of feminine 
education. 

(c) The dignifying of work for women. 

(d) The defense of her rights. 

24 



{e) Equality of man and woman before the courts and in 

matrimony. 
<(f ) Campaign against all social vices, 
(g) Stimulating the performance of social and altruistic 

service, 
(h) Adhesion to movements for peace and idealism. 

A remarkable evidence that a new day is dawning for Peruvian 
women is shown in the recent passing of a divorce law which rec- 
ognizes a number of rights which must be granted to women. 
The passing of this law was made a test of strength by both con- 
servatives and liberals, and the victory of the latter evidently 
means that in the next few years the women will be called upon 
to take a much larger part in determining what role Peru is to 
play in the modern world. 



Chile 

The most compactly organized feminist movement in South 
America is in Chile. There are three large organizations which 
represent three different classes of people — the "Club de Senoras" 
of Santiago represents the women of the higher classes ; the "Con- 
sejo Nacional de Mujeres" represents the school teacher class. 
The laboring women have recently organized a very active society 
which is taking part in the bettering of their own conditions and 
improvement of general educational and social conditions. 

While Chile has been very conservative socially and ecclesi- 
astically, yet she opened her educational institutions to women 
nearly fifty years ago. When Sarmiento as an exile was living 
in Santiago, he recommended a liberal treatment of women and 
their entrance into the university. This latter privilege was granted 
while Miguel Luis Amugettui was Minister of Education. In 
1859, when a former Minister of Education opened a contest for 
the best paper on popular education, Amugettui received the prize. 
Among the things which he advocated in that paper was the per- 
mitting of women to enter the university, an idea which he had 
gotten from Sarmiento. The development of woman's education 
was greatly delayed by the war between Chile, Peru and Bolivia. 
President Balmaceda was a great friend of popular education. 
Under him the first national high school or "liceo" for girls was 
opened, about 1890. There are now forty-nine national "liceos" 
for girls, all directed by women. Besides this, there are two pro- 
fessional schools for girls in Santiago and one in each province. 

25 



The "Consejo Nacional de Mujeres" maintains a home for girls 
attending the university in Santiago, and does a good deal in var- 
ious ways toward helping the women students in the capital city. 
There are nearly a thousand young women attending the Univer- 
sity of Chile at the present time. A more wide-awake company 
of students will not be found in any of the world's capitals. The 
President of the "Consejo Nacional" is Sra. Labarca Hubertson. 
She and her husband both are Directors of public schools in 
Santiago. Sra. Hubertson was sent to the United States by her 
Government in 1914, to study the educational system. She then 
became very much interested in the feminist movement here and 
on returning home was called to direct the Woman's Reading 
Club of Santiago. The conservative element of this club, not 
caring to engage in community activities, but desiring only the 
intellectual work of a woman's club, the new "Consejo Nacionar* 
was formed by the more progressive women. Sra. Hubertson has 
written several interesting volumes — one on women's activities 
in the United States and another on the secondary schools of the 
United States. She is accompanied in her work by a fine circle 
of women, most of whom are connected with the educational work 
in Chile. Several women's periodicals are published in Chile, one 
of the most interest being "El Penica," directed byl Senorita Elvira 
Santa Cruz. 

In an address recently given before the "Club de Sefioras" of 
Santiago, the well-known Chilean publisher, Ricardo Salas Ed- 
wards stated the following: 

"There have been manifested, during the last twenty-five years, 
phenomena of importance that have bettered woman's general 
culture and the development of her independence. Among them 
were the spread of establishments for the primary and secondary- 
education of woman; the occupations themselves that she has 
found as the teacher of the present generations, which can no- 
longer entertain a doubt of her intellectual capacity ; the establish- 
ment of great factories and selling houses, which have already 
given her lucrative employment, independent of the home; the 
organization of societies and clubs ; and, finally, artistic and liter- 
ary activities, or the Catholic social action of the highest female- 
classes, which has been developed as a stimulus to the entire sex 
during recent years. 

* * * * * 

"Simultaneously with this victory which woman has achieved' 

26 



outside of our territory, a natural force is again enlarging the 
field of representative government in Chile by increasing more 
and more the proportion of the inhabitants who participate in the 
election of public authorities, and, consequently, in determining 
the policies of the government." 

An illustration of the way Chilean women can develop when 
opportunity is given is found in the case of Sefiorita Mandujano. 
As a student, knowing very little English, she came to New York 
some five years ago. She made her own living while here and in 
a little while was delivering lectures concerning South America 
before women's clubs. After three years' residence in this country 
she became editor of a well-known magazine published in English. 
She has now returned to Chile and is giving her best to the educa- 
tion of girls and the development of the feminist movement. 

The women of Chile are doing all kind of- work to help improve 
the social conditions of women and children. In the address of 
Sr. Edwards, previously referred to, he makes the following 
appeal, which is really a description of what the women of Chile 
are now doing in their various organizations : 

"Who are better acquainted than you with the miserable habita- 
tions of the majority of the laboring people ; who know better than 
you that the scarcity of food and the slight desire to constitute 
a family, with the aid .of tuberculosis and the social evil, are at- 
tacking the traditional vigor of the working classes ; that alcohol 
and gambling wrest from the hands of innumerable laborers their 
children's bread ; and that, as a consequence of all this, the number 
of those whom natural evolution ought to select as the best fitted 
to rise from the class is very limited ; while it should be the current 
to replenish the higher classes, as in the great democracies, this 
being a phenomenon which in itself reveals the gravity of our 
social ills? 

"How, without the co-operation of the public authorities, can 
we foster the rapid improvement of dwellings and the general 
health, and how can we honestly apply the existing restrictions 
upon alcohol, which our mayors do not enforce, if there be not 
felt in our municipalities, as in other countries, the direct action of 
the woman citizen who keeps guard over the family and the race ; 
and how shall we succeed in securing, without decided political 
activity, the just regulation of labor and the establishment of a 
system for the participation of the working man in the benefits 

27 



of industry, which is the true and only solution of this artificial 
antagonism of interests ? 

"The hour for doing something presses, although the political 
leaders of the present day are not aware of its passing. You, who 
feel and comprehend the sufferings of this people, are the ones 
who can best contribute to this undertaking, before the Chilean 
masses give themselves up in desperation to the agitators, and 
before the industrials, beaten by exorbitant demands, close their 
work-shops. 

"If your activity can be useful in contributing to internal social 
peace, you are also well aware that the great thinker, President 
Wilson, has sought to found upon the sentiments of women the 
future international tranquillity, and that, in order to remove the 
threatening dangers of a new armed peace, he solicited, in the 
conferences at Versailles, the universal recognition of the right 
of, woman to vote. 

"In the dead Argentine-Chilean question, the attitude of the 
women of the two countries was a noble summons to harmony, 
which it was impossible to neglect and which caused things to be 
viewed with calmness. 

"It may be that in the old question of the Pacific, which is now 
a stumbling-block in the way of the progress and confederation 
of America, there may fall to you, with greater right, a similar 
role." 

Argentina 

The feminist movement of Argentina is more complicated and 
varied than in any other South American country. Buenos Aires 
is such a large city and there are so many different national and 
social elements, that movements cannot be analyzed here in the 
simple way that they can be for other South American centers. 

The Socialist Party has had considerable strength in Buenos 
Aires for a number of years. During the last three or four years 
the Soviet movement has developed rapidly, and there are now 
some 280,000 paid members in the Soviet movement among the 
laboring classes. Many of these are women, and they are taking 
a very active part in the propagation of all Socialist doctrines, 
often going to the extremes of Bolshevism. 

The "Consejo Nacional de Mujeres" is one of the most dignified 
and progressive of the women's organizations. It makes a careful 
study of women's movements in different parts of the world and 
invites distinguished lecturers to appear before it. One of the 

28 



most important lectures delivered before this body recently is 
that by Dr. Ernesto Quesada, the distinguished Argentine sociolo- 
gist. Those wishing a careful and conservative though sympathetic 
presentation of the feminist movement in Argentina would do well 
to read this lecture. Dr. Quesada advises the women of Argen- 
tina to work first on an educational program and after they have 
attained equality before the law, then to take up the matter of 
political equality. 

One of the most active of all Argentine women's organizations 
is the "Club de Madres" of Buenos Aires. They recently held their 
fourth annual "Baby Week" in Buenos Aires. They had the co- 
operation of the best people of the city, including merchants, 
physicians and, government officials. A large building in the heart 
of the city was placed at their disposal for their most recent ex- 
hibit. They had worked out all kinds of charts, showing the death 
rate of babies, the proper way for nourishment and taking care 
of the child, and gave out all kinds of information along these 
lines to the visitors, interesting them in carrying out the purposes 
of this organization. One of the charts showed that more babies 
under two years of age died in 1914 in Buenos Aires than there 
were persons between the ages of two and thirty. They an- 
nounced the movement as a campaign of education — not an ex- 
hibit for charity. Inasmuch as in Argentina out of every eight 
children who are born, one does not live to be two years of age, 
or, in other words, since 43,800 children less than two years of 
age died every year, they proposed to greatly reduce this death 
rate. The competent president of this organization, known in all 
parts of Argentina for her interest in social development, is 
Doctora Ernestina de Nelson, the wife of Professor Ernesto Nel- 
son, who is well-known to North American educationalists. 

Buenos Aires has been, with Rio de Janeiro, one of the worst 
centers for white slave trade. Probably for that reason the best 
women of the city have become particularly interested in the move- 
ment of a white life for two. A distinguished Anglo-Argentine 
lady, Senora Blanca C. de Hume, has made important contri- 
butions by her writings toward the solution of this problem. 

As early as 1912, we find that some of the far-seeing women 
of Buenos Aires were making scientific studies of the condition 
of women workers. Senorita Carolina Muzilli published such an 
investigation for an Exposition on Social Service in Gante, Bel- 
gium. Her work was highly commended by the government 

29 



officials of her city. This most interesting survey shows that even 
inl912 there was a large number of women working in shoe 
factories, garment factories and many other kinds of small fac- 
tories in Argentina. As far as statistics were available, there 
were shown to be at that time 205,851 women wage-earners in 
factories and commercial houses of Buenos Aires. Women were 
terribly underpaid, had to work long hours with no privileges 
whatever, and were always receiving less wages than men. When 
Miss Muzilli began her investigations she found prejudice was so 
great that it was impossible to obtain data until she had gotten 
work in, one of the factories. For several months she persevered, 
until she got the data for this remarkable survey of the conditions 
of women, one of the very few scientific studies of industrial 
conditions ever made in Latin America. 

Argentine law establishes a difference between the sexes to the 
disadvantage of women. The law excludes her from the manage- 
ment of family property, which, without condition, must be given 
into the hands of the husband. If the husband wastes the common 
property, the wife may solicit separation of their properties, if 
she has not, as is usually the custom on being married, assigned 
to her husband all property rights. The woman participates in 
the increase in value of the family property, but where there is 
a separation of this property she receives her personal property 
again and half of the increase. Laws grant divorce, which sig- 
nifies only the separation of man and wife, but incapacitates them 
for marrying again. 

The following are the demands of the "Woman's Rights Asso- 
ciation of Buenos Aires" : 

1. The repeal of all laws which establish a difference between 

the two sexes and against woman, in order that the latter 
be no longer the weakling which she is today, before the 
law. 

2. The right of women to hold public office and especially to be 

members of the National and Regional Councils on Edu- 
cation. 

3. The establishment of special courts for children and 

women. 

4. The passing of laws for the protection of maternity and 

for making legitimate all the children that are born. 

30 



5. The abolition of all legal prostitution and the establishment 

of the white life for both. 

6. An equality of wages. 

7. Equal political rights. 

The Young Women's Christian Association which has been 
organized in Buenos Aires for a number of years, has done 
much toward awaking women to new interests in life. While 
suffering from small quarters, they have gathered round them 
a number of the prominent women of Argentina, who are helping 
them in the conducting of night classes, gymnasium, cafeteria 
and other services for girls working in stores and offices, and in 
studying the general means of improving the womanhood of that 
progressive country. The "National League of Evangelical Women" 
has recently become such a live organization that the daily press 
gives attention to its program. 

Among the many activities which engage the attention of the 
women of Buenos Aires is that of temperance. This has come 
to be such an important work that they are now planning, with 
the aid of some North American societies, to erect a temperance 
building in Buenos Aires which shall house the various activities 
along these lines. 

One can, therefore, look forward with confidence to the devel- 
opment of woman's work for woman in the great city of Buenos 
Aires. The Argentine women have always shown themselves to 
be full of ideas. It was a woman who suggested in the first 
place that the peace pact between Chile and Argentina be cele- 
brated by the erection of a statue of Christ on the boundary line 
between the two countries ; thus the wonderful statue of "The 
Christ of the Andes," made out of the very cannon which were to 
have been used by these countries in destroying one another, now 
stands in its impressive isolation on the lofty Andes Mountain 
as one of the most impressive monuments in the world. 

Lest the picture be left too roseate, however, the following 
quotation is here given from a thoughtful article recently appear- 
ing in "The River Plate Observer," an English paper of Buenos 
Aires : 

"One of the 1 signs of the times in Buenos Aires is most certainly 
the spread of Feminism among Argentine women. It has planted 
its standard, which one feels convinced will never be hauled down, 
but its adherents are still few and far between, with the great 

31 



mass of the women, gentle and simple, indifferent or hostile to 
their would be redeemers. One felt this very conclusively at the 
meeting wherein Dra. Lanteri de Renshaw enunciated her par- 
liamentary programme. That her election would be of marked 
benefit to the state and forward the cause of social reform is on 
the other hand quite indisputable. Read the statistics of infant 
mortality in the up-country provinces of Argentina, study some 
of the customs of the peasants even in the Queen Province of 
Buenos Aires, go into the question of social assistance and pro- 
tection for the poor in the Federal Capital, and then, with the 
picture vividly before your eyes, ask yourself whether a qualified 
woman doctor able and willing to touch unpleasant themes with 
her gloves off, not for political ends but in order that they may be 
reformed out of existence, cannot be of use to the Republic. 

"Unfortunately few foreigners realize how unwarranted is the 
description of "civilized" as applied to things Argentine outside 
the immediate pale of the upper strata of city life. Illiteracy and 
witchcraft, two complementary crimes, are not small stigma to 
apply to a country that prides itself on its modernity. Yet forty 
per cent, of the population of Argentina comes under the first 
head, while only the other day a "witch" was scarified with knives 
in Santiago del Estero in order that a plaster of the blood might 
cure a victim of her sorceries ! 

"Infant protection and due regard to the bare prerogatives of the 
female sex are two of Argentina's most crying needs today, the 
twentieth century notwithstanding. And seeing that the present 
deputies, who are masculine, have never yet found time or oppor- 
tunity to tackle the obvious social problems that lie before their 
eyes despite the fact that many of them are medical men and hail 
from the provinces — a woman, acting under strong convictions 
and able to convince people of her sincerity, may have better 
fortune. 

"Dr. Julieta Lanteri de Renshaw offers a programme that 
should appeal not only to the members of her sex, but that demands 
the support of every person of commonsense who has studied, ever 
so superficially, the present needs of Argentina. Without a sound 
system of morality Argentina can never become a truly great 
nation, and one is almost inclined to go so far as to predict that 
until the women of Argentina have a share in the making and the 
executing of their country's laws that desirable soundness will be 

32 



still to seek. Must one explain that "morality" is here written in 
its widest sense, the greater including the less ? 

"The road before the Argentine feminists is not an easy one 
to travel ; as was said by another great Reformer some 2,000 years 
ago, their foes will be of their own households. Yet sooner or 
later the triumph will be theirs." 

Uruguay 

Uruguay is probably the most liberal of all the South American 
countries, most willing to try new ideas. It is, therefore, not 
surprising to find a very large circle of women in Montevido who 
are active in all kind of movements for the betterment of their 
people. Uruguay is the only country in South America that has 
a woman's university. One of the best woman's magazines has 
long been published there. The headquarters of the "Continental 
Temperance Society," which was organized by Urguayan women, 
is located in Montevideo. It would not be surprising to see this pro- 
gressive little country become the first of South America to grant 
votes to women. President Baltazar Brum, himself a young pro- 
gressive of a marked character, in discussing this question, recently 
said : 

"With very little understanding of the matter, it has been 
affirmed that the triumph of feminism will destroy the funda- 
mental morality of the family and of society. To contradict such 
an assertion it is only necessary to remember that this has not 
happened in any of the countries which have decided in favor 
of the political equality of both sexes. Women vote in England, 
Germany, Denmark, Austria. Switzerland, Australia, the United 
States, Canada, etc., without having originated the calamities 
announced by the pessimist. In regard to this matter it would be 
well to study the situation of women in Catholic societies and in 
Protestant societies. In the latter women are surrounded with 
the greatest respect and consideration. They participate actively, 
on an equality with men, in all subjects of general interest. Their 
homes lose nothing in the matter of comfort, morality and whole- 
some joy in comparison with Catholic homes, and their children 
are cared for with no less love and solicitude and certainly with 
more provision than Catholic children. The political activities 
of the Protestant women have not therefore broken the funda- 
mental morality of society nor have they disturbed the happiness 
of the family. 

33 



"The Catholic woman, on the contrary, is placed on a plane 
of evident inferiority in her relationship to men. The laws which 
men in these countries dictate are full of irritating injustice, giving 
the man a specially privileged place. The woman only occupies 
herself with the home and social activities. She is kept in com- 
plete indifference and isolation in regard to questions of general 
interest. She is about the same as a piece of furniture in the 
house, ornamental furniture in some cases and in others simply 
a matter of utility, instead of being a person of clear thought and 
of disciplined will. And it is natural that exactly these same 
societies, where the erroneous conceptions and prejudices against 
feminine dignity prevail, are the very ones which resist most 
strongly the recognition of woman's political rights." 

Brazil 

The remarkable development of the desire among the women 
of Brazil to get away from their old restrictions and to be of real 
service to their country, may be seen in the development of the 
Young Women's Christian Association of Rio de Janeiro. It was 
established in 1920. In the celebration of its first anniversary 
a few weeks ago, it was able to report 1,200 members. The press 
of Brazil often carries important articles concerning women. 
Recently a bill was proposed in the National Senate, to give 
women the vote. In a recent number of the "Journal do Com- 
mercio," the most important daily in Brazil, an article covering 
a page was given over to an argument for women's rights. As 
is there said, "Only one little Latin American country, Costa Rica 
in Central America, has given the vote to women. In no South 
American country has she gained this right. Brazil ought to 
lead in doing this thing which most of the progressive countries 
of the world have already done." 

Dr. Ruy Barbosa, recently elected a judge of the World Court 
of the League of Nations, referred as follows to the need of 
Brazilian women enlarging their sphere : 

"The world moves toward other laws, toward other goals, 
toward a future of illimitable extent. Crowns have disappeared, 
democracy seems to be extending its vast dominion over the whole 
world. All human relations are changed, transformed, recast, 
even those between the sexes. The older conditions of life are 
being swept away in a revolution that may have incalculable re- 
sults. 

"Women assumes now in the destiny of the human race a part 

34 



that will place upon her burdens and opportunities not experienced 
hitherto. In the British electorate, if I mistake not, there are six 
million women voters. A revolution, one of the greatest revolu- 
tions of the world, has taken place legally, peacefully, by an act 
of the parliament, without any one's further concerning himself 
over the incalculable change that has occurred in the policy of one 
of the greatest nations of Europe. Will it be possible for Brazil, 
in the midst of all these revolutions and upheavals, not to suffer 
its meed of change in the character of its politics, its institutions, 
the procedures of its statesmen ? 

"No, gentlemen ; we must be taught by these events, and we 
ought to realize that our republic must accommodate herself to 
the new modes of thought, that our government must set its 
people a different example from the wonted one, or days perhaps 
tempestuous will be in store for us." 

One or the most remarkable demonstrations of the change in 
attitude in South America toward women was the recent visit of 
the president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union of 
North America, Miss Anna Gordon. Miss Gordon was received 
not only by the most distinguished women in each of the countries, 
but by the highest government officials, including the Presidents 
of practically all the countries she visited. In Peru she was given 
a reception in the famous University of San Marcos, the oldest 
university on the American continent, and until recently one of 
the most conservative. In Chile she was also received in the 
"Salon de Honor" of the University, was invited to the homes of 
the best families, received by the President of the Republic and 
•given every honor that a distinguished visitor could be given. In 
Buenos Aires the principal women of the city gave her a reception 
at the Plaza Hotel, where the unusual thing occurred of the Bishop 
of the Catholic Church and the Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church appearing on the same platform to advocate temperance. 
A great meeting was held in the Colon Theatre, probably the most 
beautiful theatre in the world, where every nation of the world 
was represented in tableaux advocating the cause of temperance. 
In Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro the same honors were shown 
this modest little woman. Be it said to her credit that she every- 
where made it clear that she was only there to show the sympathy 
of North American women! for South American women, and their 
desire to be of any help to their Southern sisters, but in no way 
to dictate policies or programs. 

35 



ITT. 
THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT 

"Alcohol is a poison. It must be destroyed," were the words 
written on a large banner, stretched across the street, in the first 
town I visited in Chile. Passing along the streets to a beautiful 
park on the seashore, I sat down to enjoy the view and found 
written on the very bench on which I was sitting, "Alcohol is a 
poison. It must be destroyed." This is only one of the evidences 
of the strong temperance campaign carried on not by foreign 
agitators but by the Chileans, not by the intellectuals and the 
theorists but by the labor unions. Workmen have come to realize 
that along with other influences that aid in their exploitation, the 
liquor business is a very powerful one. Many of the rich families 
and the clergy own large vineyards and the industrial situation 
is shaped so that the products of these vineyards and of the brew- 
eries must be sold. Here is a case where the production creates 
the demand and not demand the production. The total production 
of intoxicants annually in Chile is estimated at 600,000,000 litres, 
and there are said to be 26,000 producers of wine. The capital 
invested in alcoholic liquors is reported as 270,000,000 pesos. 

Chile has often been pointed out as one of the worst countries 
in the world for alcoholic drink. The Araucanian Indians in the 
southern part of the country were the strongest of all the native 
races of South America. The Chileans were never able* to conquer 
them by arms. During recent years, however, there is reported 
to have been a systematic effort to conquer them by alcohol and 
certainly they have become a very weak people. An awakening 
to the great loss of character among these Indians because of 
strong drink has resulted in a petition from the residents in the 
district. It is for a greater enforcement of the existing laws 
which prevent the sale of alcohol on Sundays and feast days and 
for new laws which will gradually eliminate entirely the selling 
of liquor to the Indians. 

A few years ago it would have seemed quite ridiculous to speak 
of total abstinence in Chile, but some few brave spirits, under 
the leadership of Dr. Carlos Fernandez Pefia, one of the finest 
spirits in all America, and one of the strongest fighters against 
social evil, began the temperance campaign. Vigorous societies 

36 



have been developed in the cities of Valparaiso and Santiago. 
The "National League Against Alcohol" now represents a very 
forceful combination of men and women who have influence in 
the country. At their last national convention they proposed the 
introduction of text-books teaching the effects of alcohol, in the 
primary and high schools. As already indicated, however, the 
labor movement has recently arisen as the most influential advo- 
cate of temperance. They have been encouraged in their work 
by President Alessandri. One of his first official acts on assuming 
office last December was to receive a petition from the Chilean 
Federation of Labor protesting against the alleged attempts of 
the League for the Defense of the Wine Industry to force north- 
ern port workers to unload liquors. The labor organization already 
had adopted a resolution, effective January 1, to refuse to unload 
liquors, whether of home or foreign manufacture. This petition, 
urges the government to co-operate with the Commission on Con- 
trol of Alcohol, in order that the commission might realize its 
program based on education and ultimate transformation "of the 
wine industry, breweries and distilleries into great factors of 
public welfare." The federation represents 300,000 workers it 
is said. The petition vigorously assails alcoholism and declares 
that the Executive Labor Board was instructed to initiate a cam- 
paign against it throughout the republic. The wine growers are 
naturally organizing in defense of their interests. 

The protest of the workmen against the handling of alcohol 
has extended to all parts of the republic. The watchword of 
Dr. Pefia is "Alcohol is a poison ; taken in large or small quantities, 
it is a poison." The owners of the vineyards are opposed to 
Dr. Pefia. A cabinet minister recently issued a decree prohib- 
iting the drinking of alcoholic beverages in properties owned 
by the state and announced that he would prohibit the plant- 
ing of vineyards. This prohibition includes the nitrate dis- 
trict where there are a hundred thousand workmen who live 
in a desert, earn the best wages and consume a large part of the 
products of the vineyards. Some therefore consider that the 
order is a blow to the economic progress of the country. But 
the recent election of Sr. Alessandri as President shows that many 
believe in the suppression of the traffic in alcohol. 

Soon after the President was elected he made a trip to the 
nitrate regions. At the banquets that were given for him he 
ordered that no alcoholic beverages should be served. This is the 

37 



first time that such a thing has happened in the history of the 
republic. The President is working to solve the economic side 
of this problem in a way to benefit the country. As Dr. Pena says, 
"We have been able to create in our country the most famous 
vineyards in the new world. We have developed the best experts. 
We have the best grapes and the best wines. The same enter- 
prise will cause us to find the best way to use the products of our 
vineyards for the progress and not for the destruction of our 
people." The Chilean government not long ago sent experts to 
the United States to study the question of the use of grapes for 
grape juice and other non-intoxicating drinks. 

Uruguay is another South American country where a very 
strong prohibition movement has been developed for the last five 
years. The movement is so conscious of its strength that it has 
recently launched the battle-cry, "Uruguay dry by 1925, the Cen- 
tenary of our independence." There are those who laugh at such 
a cry, as there were those in the United States who laughed at 
the slogan, "A saloonless nation by 1920." There is no question 
that this temperance movement in Uruguay counts some of the 
most influential people of the country as its members. The 
"National League Against Alcohol" has held several annual con- 
ventions and is now planning a temperance convention for all 
of South America. The South American secretary of the 
Woman's Christian Temperance Union had her headquarters for 
four years in Mote video and made her influence very strongly 
felt. She has recently moved to Buenos Aires where an equally 
strong movement is now developing. The South American secre- 
taries of the World Sunday School Association and of the Com- 
mittee on Co-operation in Latin America have also been called 
to aid in this movement which is led by some of the most dis- 
tinguished men and women of the country. It has the hearty 
sympathy of President Brum, who paid the expenses of two 
North American young women, representing the Woman's Chris- 
tian Temperance Union, on a trip through the different provinces 
of Uruguay to give public lectures on the matter of temperance. 

An anti-alcoholic law has just been presented to the Congress 
of the Republic, which contains the following provisions : 

"The drinking, manufacturing, invitation to partake, the presen- 
tation or sale of alcoholic liquors, shall be considered as crimes 
designated as alcoholism and punished by fine from 200 to 1,000 
pesos, or imprisonment. This does not except wine, beer, cider, 

38 



and liquors with a smaller alcohol content. The preparation and 
sale of alcoholic beverages in drug stores and pharmacies and 
the therapeutic use of alcohol upon the presentation of a doctor's 
prescription, given for legitimate reasons, are exceptions to this 
law." 

In Uruguay a number of the best physicians and scientists have 
given attention to this subject. In a treatise on the diseases of the 
liver, Dr. Ricaldoni says : "Our drinkers are eclectic. Wine is 
found on the table; away from the table there is white drink, 
cognac, bitters, ginger and other mixtures. The workman re- 
freshes himself with sugar water. The wine is generally of the 
detestable kind, the white drinks are atrocious. The well-to-do 
drinker believes in small doses taken often. The laborer uses 
torrential down-pourings on Sundays. The former dissimilates 
with little difficulty during the hours in which he is in contact 
with the world his physical debilities, inaugurating each morning 
with an eye-opener. The latter gives the whole week to honest 
toil and leaves for Sundays and holidays his torment by intoxica- 
tion." 

The Director of Charities in Montevideo recently said : "It 
is not simply among the laboring classes where the battle against 
alcohol must be fought. There are other degrading manifesta- 
tions which can only be combatted by means of education and by 
legal repression. There is the alcoholism of the dress suit, of the 
'high life,' that has invented a multitude of names to desig- 
nate its curious establishments which are, after all, only 
places for the selling of alcoholic liquors, just as harmful as 
the taverns of the poor where the Indian drinks his corn whiskey 
and renders fervid worship to Bachus in the midst of the lowest 
scandals. In these countries of the La Plata the fight against 
alcohol is not yet well organized to counteract the very strong 
influence in these young societies. Only a few enthusiastic 
propagandists are working against a strong general indifference. 
We need a study of social hygiene, with statistics vigorously 
presented, to change public opinion." 

In Argentina the eminent international lawyer and journalist 
who writes the editorials for "La Prensa," Dr. Estanislao Zeballo, 
has recently prepared a law which was presented to Congress, 
which goes- a good ways toward making Argentina a dry country. 

39 



The project received a favorable comment from the press in 
Argentina, "La Capital" commenting as follows : 

"The project of deputy don Julio S. de la Reta (who presented 
the measure) comes at an opportune moment, and we hope that 
it will be appreciated in its full value by legislators desirous of 
combatting the social plagues conspiring against life, the agents 
of physical and moral degradation. The regulation of the manu- 
facture and sale of alcoholic drinks should be the object of a 
careful study on the part of the National Congress ; the initiatives 
tending to eliminate slowly the consumption of drinks of this 
nature must be complemented by the total suppression of the sale 
of liquors particularly harmful to the consumer." 

The women of Argentina have a number of anti-alcoholic 
organizations. Encouraged by the aid of the Woman's Christian 
Temperance Union, they are now planning a building in Buenos 
Aires which will be the center of temperance and other social 
movements for the betterment of community life. 

The temperance movement in Brazil is being led by President 
Pessoa himself, who has recently proposed to the National Con- 
gress quite drastic legislation. A very active campaign has been 
carried on by the evangelical Sunday Schools in Brazil. The 
Sunday School movement in that country has developed very 
rapidly under Brazilian leadership. The daily press is very favor- 
able to the movement and the Brazilian leaders are able to develop 
public opinion in favor of temperance through the newspapers. 
The pastor of a large Presbyterian church in Rio de Janeiro, 
which counts among its constituency members of Congress and 
leading professional men, recently inaugurated his stereopticon 
with a lecture on temperance which many of the most influential 
citizens of the capital attended. 

In Colombia, Senator Felix Salazar is said to have presented 
to Congress a law on alcoholic prohibitions which was much 
debated. The Minister of Agriculture and Commerce is here 
quoted : 

"The anti-alcoholic problem must be met squarely, and an 
advance must be made despite the obstacles. In the United States, 
when the fight began, the trial of alcohol produced a book with 
statistical data that was appalling. Crime finds in alcohol its 
feeder, and statistics prove this. Fifty per cent, of the murders 
have alcohol as their cause ; likewise sixty per cent, of the divorces ; 
the days in which most crimes occur are precisely Saturdays and 

40 



Sundays when the working classes dedicate themselves in their 
idle hours to alcohol." 

Temperance agitation in Peru was begun as far back as 1901, 
when the municipality of Lima offered a prize for the best essay 
on the means of combatting alcohol. The real campaign began 
in 1912, when the national society of temperance was formed. 
Due to their work there was passed recently a law which prohibits 
the sale of intoxicating liquors from Saturday afternoon to Mon- 
day morning, in all parts. A prize was offered for the best 
manual of temperance for teachers. A young student, fresh from 
the University of Wisconsin, won the prize and his book has now 
become a text-book in the schools of the republic. The temper- 
ance society lately pointed out the fact that in Lima there was 
a "cantina" for every nineteen families, and a public school for 
every 1,025 families. 

Reference has already been made, in the section on the feminist 
movement, to the visit of Miss Anna Gordon, president of the 
"Woman's Christian Temperance Union." That visit signified as 
much and probably more for the temperance movement than it 
did for the feminist movement. Dr. Silva Cruz, the Secretary 
of War, and president of the University Extension of the National 
Educational Association, of Chile, said the following in welcoming 
Miss Gordon to the reception held in her honor in the University 
of Chile: 

"The presence among us of Miss Anna Gordon and Miss Julia 
Dean, whose exemplary lives are a beautiful witness of feminine 
energy placed at the service of the most vital interests of humanity, 
the presence of these heroines of social action, honors and rejoices 
the National Association of Education. The fine tact of woman, 
her delicate sensibilities, her superior morality, her heart open to 
the vibrations of human sympathy, make her the best of social 
workers. There is no one like her to suffer with those who suffer, 
to bind up the wounds, no one like her to prevent social vice of 
which she is the first victim generally, without blame herself. 
Happy are the people who like the great republic of the North 
have opened to women a wide field for their noble and reneger- 
ative mission. The forces for good in the United States have 
conquered the vice of alcohol throughout the country and they 
are now prepared to give their beneficent influence to other parts 
of the world." 

Miss Gordon's visit was a triumphant procession from the first 

41 



city visited, Lima, to the last one, Rio de Janeiro. At a fiesta 
given in the Colon Theatre of Buenos Aires by the children of 
Buenos Aires, aided by the principal educationalists, the children 
showed the value of water for health and advocated in various 
classic ways the value of temperance. Motion pictures were taken 
of this entertainment and these films are being shown in differ- 
ent parts of South America with splendid effect. 



A2 



J 
IV. 

THE MOVEMENT TO MODERNIZE EDUCATION 

Education always has been recognized by South America as a 
most important problem. Illiteracy has hung like a millstone 
about the neck of the young, ambitious countries. Practical 
difficulties, the lack of financial ability, a scattered population, the 
lack of teachers, etc., have prohibited coping with illiteracy. The 
inheritences of scholasticism have prevented the secondary schools 
from producing students who were prepared to confront the 
practical problems of life. Today, however, there are found 
various groups who voice their dissatisfaction with the old 
scholasticism and a determination to reform their educational 
system. 

The reform of education is a favorite topic of the press and 
with public speakers and legislators. In the old days those who 
referred to the high per cent of illiteracy were regarded as un- 
patriotic. But now there is much public discussion of the ques- 
tion. "La Manana," a daily of Montevideo, in an editorial advo- 
cating new methods, recently gave the following statistics on 
illiteracy in the different countries. Of course they are only 
estimates, as no real census has ever been taken of most of these 
countries. Argentina, 38.8; Uruguay, 40; Chile, 68; Brazil, 86; 
Bolivia, 87; Peru, 88; Paraguay, 88; Venezuela, 92; Colombia, 
92. 

It was also stated that in Brazil, when a recent census was taken 
in one district, only thirteen out of three; thousand could sign their 
name. In Ecuador there is one pupil for every two thousand 
people, in primary schools. There are only one thousand nine 
hundred students in all secondary schools. There is no high school 
for girls and only two girls in the Republic are in the University 
of Ecuador. 

The following are interesting words from the rector of an 
Argentine university: "Ten thousand persons do all the thinking 
and directing for the eight or nine million Argentines. Consumers 
of French novels may number one hundred thousand, but the 
readers of serious, non technical books are between two thousand 
and four thousand." 

Agustin Alvarez says : "South America lives by lighting candles 
to the saints in order to see who are the ones to work the miracles* 

43 



while it does not kindle lights in the minds of the children in order 
to illuminate the way." 



Student Activities 

Among those who are giving themselves to the reformation of 
the educational system of South America, the students themselves 
form the most spectacular group. Student organizations in these 
countries, composed as they generally are of the sons of. the 
upper classes, have always exerted a strong influence in public 
matters. Students often showed their displeasure by staging 
demonstrations, when matters did not go to suit them. These 
demonstrations in former days were usually against some action of 
the Church or of foreigners. The change from the old way was 
vividly shown recently when the students marched through the 
streets, not with any cries of "down with the priests," or "death 
to the foreigners," but with these significant words written on their 
banners : "Luz, Mas Luz." These students had come to realize 
that the great outside world was moving on, and that their anti- 
quated educational system was not fitting them for this new 
world. "Light, more light" on present day life was their demand. 

As in China the students are discovering that they may become 
a social and political factor. They are often foolish in aims and 
methods, after the manner of youth, but their influence is extra- 
ordinary. Lately they have taken to joining forces with the labor 
unions. This combination of students and workmen is one of 
the most interesting social phenomena noticeable in South Amer- 
ica. Their energies are directed against reactionary forces. Their 
radical actions have brought about some startling results in coun- 
tries where they are compactly organized, and in one or two of 
the countries governments are very much afraid of what these new 
crusaders may do. 

In Peru this union lias advanced no further than a student 
movement for teaching the laboring men in night classes, since 
the labor movement there is not yet strong enough to take any 
part in a fight for reform. But the students of San Marcos 
University are teaching classes of laboring men, that number 
from three to seven hundred, five nights a week, either in the 
student center in Lima, or in industrial centers in the suburbs of 
the city. This is probably, a most hopeful sign for those who look 
forward to the time when the Peruvian labor element shall be 

44 



sufficiently instructed to take an intelligent part in their own 
emancipation from the drudgery and squalor of their present life. 
Even now this combination of students and workmen in Peru 
once in a while joins in a slap at the Church, although to do so in 
Peru means daring to put one's economic or social life in jeopardy. 

In Argentina this student-labor movement has grown most re- 
markably. It has brought about results in most every phase of 
life. In 1910 the students and workmen came into open conflict 
in the streets of Buenos Aires. There were most serious results 
from this fight. To see them now working side by side for the 
forcing of reforms is therefore little less than miraculous. It is 
in Argentina that both the students and the workmen have carried 
their demands to revolutionary results. Student riots and strikes 
have not been amusing pranks or diversions by any means. They 
have resulted in serious fighting and deaths on both sides. In 
La Plata the police found themselves unable to handle the situa- 
tion and soldiers were called out. They instituted a seige of the 
"buildings where the students, armed with modern rifles, defended 
themselves for days. During one of the strikes a student who 
dared to go to his examination, was shot down in cold blood by 
his fellow students. 

A recent editorial in "La Nacion," of Buenos Aires, says : "In 
the Colegio Nacional of La Plata there are found today much 
broken furniture, torn curtains, documents thrown over the floors 
and archives upturned because of student riots. A great' deal can 
be forgiven on account of the fire of youth, but it is impossible to 
understand how educated young men in centers of culture can 
fall into acts which reveal that the most essential thing in life 
is lacking — respect. This bad behavious is seen not only in the 
action of students of the Colegio Nacional of La Plata. It is seen 
daily among those who do not show any of the forms of courtesy 
which were such a beautiful part of our social life in the old days. 
There is a visible lack of regard for the rights of others. All 
places are entered as a conquered country, and there seems to be 
no feeling of power, if it is not exercised in acts of violence. This 
spectacle is seen on the streets at all hours. Trams are taken 
by assault. Women are pushed in elevators and loud comments 
are made on emotional scenes in the picture shows, where many 
of the spectators keep on their hats until the curtain rises. There 
is a general lack of respect and this situation gives rise to such 
happenings as we have witnessed in the national college." 

45 



In Buenos Aires the rector of the Law School, one of the best 
known publicists of South America, was barricaded recently in 
the Law Building by students, who kept him there until he was 
rescued by the police reserves. In Cordova the strike lasted for 
almost all last year, and witnessed the same bloody scenes that in. 
the old days used to be associated with labor strikes in the United 
States. 

As a demonstration of sympathy with the students of Cordova, 
the entire university student body of Argentina went on a three 
days' strike, when they paraded the streets and called with 
vociferous voices for their rights. Following that demonstration, 
the Argentine University Federation was organized and a con- 
vention held, in July of 1919, to study student problems. As a 
result of this movement the students have forced the authorities ta 
revise the university system, at least to the extent of giving them 
a vote in the election of the faculties that are to teach them. 
This right was demanded because the students felt that they were 
not getting the teaching and attention that modern life demanded. 
Their professors were generally professional men, who came ta 
the university for their lectures only, giving the same material 
year after year, paying no attention to the students, using their 
position for their own selfish ends rather than for the develop- 
ment of the students. One who has lived closely to these students, 
in referring to these struggles, says with evident sympathy for 
this movement: "If our students have not been called to shed their 
blood on the field of battle, there seems to be in these movements 
a moral awakening and a disposition to uproot at any cost the 
erroneous traditions from which they have been suffering. It is 
necessary to live close to these students, to suffer with them the 
results of being abandoned by governmental authorities and un- 
derstand the terrible lack of moral guidance, in order to appreciate 
the meaning of many of their acts." 



Attitude of Educational Leaders 
Among the teachers and educational administrators, as well as 
among the students, is found this dissatisfaction with the past and 
a striving toward a new day. The movement among the profes- 
sional educators toward modernizing their work seems to lean 
toward a closer following of the United States in educational 
matters. 

Upon my first visit to South America in 1914 I was impressed 

46 



with the fact that North American education was very slightly 
regarded in our sister continent. In 1917 I found that the stu- 
dents were turning to the United States because the war had 
shut them out of Europe.. In 1921 I find not only that students 
are intensely interested in how they can get to the United States, 
but that educational leaders in the government and in the uni- 
versities are also studying North American educational methods 
and are becoming convinced that these should be more largely 
adopted by South America. In the past the French system was 
the generally accepted basis of education. German and Belgian 
professors have been employed to some extent during the last 
decade, but today the North American educational ideals seem 
to be more popular. The returning students from the United 
States and the tremendous surge of national unity and effective- 
ness which marked our participation in the war, are serving to- 
gether to turn the attention of Hispanic educational leaders to 
this country. They begin to suspect that there is a whole realm 
of idealism and of intellectual evolution here into which they have 
scarcely entered. They are even asking : "Is is not possible that 
an educational system freely developed in a free American state 
should have certain qualities that would fit it for the uses and 
needs of other free American states?" The question has become 
a fascinating one for them. I do not wish to convey the idea 
that there is any wholesale copying of our educational system, 
for such is not the case. It may be even that I have identified too 
largely the desire for modernizing education with a leaning toward 
North American education. 

In Peru, the traditional friend of the United States, the Presi- 
dent of the Republic, has appointed an American Educational 
Commission through which the whole educational system of Peru 
has been turned over to North Americans for reorganization. The 
work of this commission really began some ten years ago when 
the present executive, Sr. Leguia, was serving his first term. He 
then called Dr. Harry Erwin Bard and three other educational 
experts from the United States to reform the national school 
system. Dr. Bard worked with the Peruvian educators for some 
two years on the theoretical side of the problem, but little was 
done practically. Two of the other North American educators 
became heads of state schools, and one, Dr. Guiseke, is still the 
president of the University of Cuzco. When President Leguia 
was again chosen President last year, he invited Dr. Bard to re- 

47 



turn and bring with him twenty-five leading educators, specialists 
in school administration, normal, technical and commercial train- 
ing and school activities. These men are now on the ground 
beginning their work. The number may be increased to as high 
as two hundred if the funds can be secured. The possibilities 
for success or for failure are enormous. 

A new law suggested by the commission and just passed pro- 
vides for a complete administrative system, based, as far as 
possible, on a sane balance between the political and administrative 
functions of public education, and a right adjustment between 
central and local control. It provides amply for the practical and 
vocational training without neglecting the cultural subjects which 
have been the backbone of Peru's system heretofore. Particular 
care is given to the training of teachers, from the primary grades 
to the University, so that many of the best young men and women 
of the country should be attracted to this profession, since also 
a much higher rate of compensation is provided. The Director 
General of Instruction, which office is now held by Dr. Bard, 
has, under the Minister of Public Instruction, a member of the 
Cabinet, complete charge of the technical side of the system. Next 
to him are three regional directors, who have charge of primary 
and secondary schools in the three districts into which the nation 
is divided. Each of these regional directors has a corps of assist- 
ants who represent him in the inspection of schools, in the con- 
duct of institutes and in other ways of developing education in 
their respective territories. The directors themselves are required 
to give a reasonable time to visiting the schools and through them 
local needs should receive attention, heretofore an impossible 
thing. The three regional directors are among those brought from 
the United states recently, and are already out on their districts 
getting the new system inaugurated. 

This educational mission is one of the greatest opportunities that 
has ever been given to the United States to pass on the blessings 
of its public schools to a needy sister nation. If this experiment in 
Peru is successful, it will have a strong influence on American 
private schools, not only in Peru but in all parts of Latin America. 
Jf political upheavals, church intrigues and lack of funds cause 
it to fail, it will also react against American mission schools and 
against all North American influence in South America. 

Besides this movement by the government, the classic Univer- 
sity of San Marcos, the oldest in America, founded a hundred 

48 



years before John Harvard began his college, has recently sent 
one of its young and enthusiastic professors to the United States 
to study our university life. He returned to Lima with a message 
of enthusiasm for North American institutions and an expression 
of liberalism which is likely to cause something of a revolution at 
old San Marcos. While this university is not financially able to 
carry out its desire for a regular system of exchange professors 
with North American schools, it would be greatly pleased to have 
the closest relations possible with them. The students of the Uni- 
versity are studying how to be helpful in the community. This 
extension work is a healthy sign of an awakening in the institu- 
tion. Since the University was not in session I could not lecture 
before the whole student body, as the faculty desired, but I was 
able a number of times to speak with them in small gatherings 
about closer relations with North American university life. It 
would have been easy to spend several months there in just such 
work. It would be well for some of our universities to take the 
major responsibility in developing an interchange with this historic 
institution of the ancient city of Lima. 

An interesting experience in Lima was being in the midst of a 
student riot, which was brought on by police interference with a 
meeting in the "patio" of San Marcos University, when Prof. 
Belaunde was addressing the students concerning certain abuses 
practiced by the government. In the midst of the address govern- 
ment secret agents started a disturbance which grew until all who 
had guns were using them, and those of us who didn't were hiding 
behind any available protection. The invading of the sacred pre- 
cints of the revered San Marcos caused a sensation and most of 
the faculty resigned. The government has been unable to get rep- 
resentative men to take their places, hence the University remains 
closed, having been declared to be in "cstado de reorganization" 

Chile is one of the countries where, in the past, there has been 
most prejudice against the United States. During the last few 
years, however, students from Chile have been coming to this 
country in larger numbers and have reported their favorable im- 
pressions back home, changing the old prejudice into a real appre- 
ciation, especially of our educational life. 

The first town visited in the "Shoe-string Republic" was the 
port of Coquimbo, where I went ashore for a few hours while the 
boat was discharging cargo. Wandering along the street I saw a 
school building and thought I would go in for a visit. What was 

49 



my surprise to find that the Director was a young Chilean graduate 
of Columbia University who had just returned from the United 
States, after three years of special study, in order to establish for 
the Government of Chile commercial high schools of the type 
which has been developed in the United States. A visit to his 
classes showed that he had been able to penetrate deeply enough 
into commercial education in the United States to establish a similar 
institution in his own town. I am just in receipt of a book of some 
five hundred pages which he has written for the Chilean govern- 
ment. This is to be distributed among the educators of Chile for 
the purpose of propagating the idea of commercial high schools 
in that country along the lines established by the author in the 
Coquimbo experiment. 

The University of Chile, located in Santiago, is a great school, 
a real university, with several thousand students. It was my 
privilege to lecture to the student body in the great Salon de Honor 
on the subject of developing closer relations between Chile and the 
United States. I also gave two addresses before the students of 
the Instituto Pedagogico, which bears the same relations to the 
University that Teachers' College does to Columbia University. 
There are several students in the "Instituto" who are planning to 
come to the United States with Dr. Jose Maria Galvez, the head 
of the department of modern languages, who has been for many 
years an enthusiastic advocate for North American colleges among 
the Chilean students. He has been appointed to represent his 
University as exchange professor this year at the University of 
California. I am sorry to say that, up to the time of writing, the 
government has been unable to provide for his coming. This 
exchange between the universities of Chile and of California is 
only the beginning of what ought to be developed in every educa- 
tional center in America. The head of the Normal School of 
Chile had spent three years in New York studying North Ameri- 
can educational systems, as a result of which he has changed his 
curriculum to conform very largely to that of our own state nor- 
mal schools. 

The time I spent in Santiago was all too short to answer the 
many requests for interviews with students and educators concern- 
ing ways in which closer educational relations with the United 
States might be established. The President of Chile told me that 
he was very anxious to have North American educators come to 

50 



Chile and asked me to extend a special invitation to certain educa- 
tors to visit Santiago. 

The younger elements in Chile, led by Prof. Enrique Molino, 
have recently started a new university in Concepcion. Its curricu- 
lum is quite different from the more conservative institution in 
Santiago and emphasizes the modern idea of pedagogy, science and 
psychology. 

Chile has recently become deeply stirred over her problem of 
illiteracy and has passed a compulsory education law. and provided 
for the raising of the salaries of the teaching force and the invest- 
ment of a million dollars a year in new school buildings. The 
beneficent effects of this new effort are shown in the message of 
the President in June, 1921, where the following is reported : 

Public school instruction has progressed favorably, within the 
means available to the government. 

There are actually in session 3,276 primary schools, with an 
attendance of 330,059 pupils. The teaching personnel of these 
schools is 7,455. There are 15 normal schools for teachers, with 
an attendance of 1.950 pupils. There are 15 daily high schools, 
with a student body of 2,866; and 29 night schools with an attend- 
ance of 5,391 students. 

Schools for needle-work, and workshops for manual training 
such as carpentry, basket-making, binding, weaving, etc., are oper- 
ating to the number of 878, with an attendance of 115.664 
students. 

On the 27th of February this year, the law making primary in- 
struction obligatory came into force, and already in the month of 
March, 87,869 children had matriculated more than in the same 
month in 1920. 

Chile has undertaken to give to her system of education a more 
practical trend which has brought about great reforms in her pri- 
mary instruction, beginning with the school manual training class- 
es, perfected in 1918, under the name of primary industrial schools. 
There has also been established a fourth vocational grade after 
the sixth primary grade (third) for the purpose of investigating 
and determining the vocation of the pupils before they leave the 
primary schools, training them to this end, fitting girls for domestic 
occupations and boys for the various trades which they have 
chosen. 

In the last meeting held by the Association of National Educa- 
tion the following decisions were made : To state that the basis of 

51 



national education and the reform of the secondary courses and 
better preparation of students entering the university are the pur- 
poses of program for primary education as presented to the 
senate; to urge better and more effective methods in the teaching 
of primary, secondary, technical and military education ; the estab- 
lishment of rural normal schools for the improvement of country 
schools and increase of agricultural education ; the carrying out of 
the plans of the board of school control, which includes the teach- 
ing of hygiene, the transformation of the liquor industry, and the 
scientific choice and encouragement of sports ; to congratulate 
President Arturo Alessandri for his address to the university 
extension and for having assumed the leadership of the movement 
for the improvement of national life. 

In Buenos Aires I found educational conditions most turbulent. 
The propaganda of the Bolshevists has been more successful here 
than anywhere else in South America, due, no doubt, to the very 
large foreign population. The educational system, along with the 
economic one, has been greatly disorganized, as already stated. 
For this reason it is difficult to describe the situation more than 
to say that it is in a state of flux. The disorganization has natu- 
rally brought many of the educational leaders to a serious study 
of North American pedagogy and school administration. 

Professor Ernesto Nelson, an influential Argentine educator 
who has spent a number of years in the United States, has recently 
published an important work entitled "Nueslros Males Universita- 
rios," in which he compares the North and South American sys- 
tems and advocates the adoption of the former in large part. Pro- 
fessor Nelson is also president of the' "Universidad Libre," an in- 
stitution which endeavors to bring the teachings and benefits of 
modern science to the people. While this institution is not competi- 
tive with the state universities, yet it and similar movements, show 
that many educational leaders feel the need of striking out along 
some new lines. Some of the proposed activities are lectures re- 
garding social and public hygiene, lectures on education in the 
United States, publication of works on social and educational 
problems, illustrated lectures on biology, physics and chemistry. 

One of the most encouraging things is the way both professors 
and students have rallied to the movement to help the needy stu- 
dent of Eastern Europe, whose call was recently brought by Mr. 
Chas. D. Hurrey of the Young Men's Christian Association. In 
Buenos Aires some of the leading professors are giving liberally 

52 



of their time to the compact organization which has been formed 
for gathering funds. It is probably the first time in their history 
that Argentine students in a body have taken up a great unselfish 
cause outside their own borders. 

While it is not exactly on the subject of the new educational 
movements of today, yet because of the splendid illustration it fur- 
nishes of how the right kind of North American teachers can help 
South America, I want to refer here to the establishment of the 
first normal and kindergarten schools in Argentina. 

The great Argentine, Domingo F. Sarmiento, living in exile in 
the United States, became an intimate friend of Horace Mann 
and a profound advocate of Mann's theories of education. While 
in the United States Sarmiento was elected president of his coun- 
try. One of his first official acts was to commission a Methodist 
missionary, Dr. Good fellow, to engage a number of the best North 
American teachers to come to Argentina to organize a system of 
public schools. Congress authorized the President's plans. He 
decided that the first trial of an institution (to be a normal school 
to prepare teachers for primary instruction), that he believed was 
to revolutionize his country, be made in the city of Parana. The 
whole plan was worked out for President Sarmiento by the emin- 
ent North American educator who was called to head this revolu- 
tionary educational institution. This great man — great if little 
known — was Prof. George A. Stearns. He was assisted by his no 
less remarkable wife, Mrs. Julia A. Stearns, who acted as the 
principal of the Model School. 

The social and political conditions of the country, which was 
just coming out of anarchy, the unorganized condition of transpor- 
tation on which pupils from other parts of the country had to 
depend, the, absolute newness of the whole idea wrapped up in the 
institution, all added to the difficulty of the task and the greatness 
of the success achieved by Prof. Stearns, of whom everyone in 
Parana today speaks as though he were a national hero. The 
school opened in 1871. There were two teachers and twenty- two 
students. In the interesting reports made annually by Stearns he 
says: "The United States cannot claim the honor of having dis- 
covered these new methods of teaching; they have been taken 
from other countries and adapted to our needs. They have given 
origin to a system of popular education, which has demonstrated 
by its fruits that it is the best in the world. The great basis of this 
system is the normal schools . . . What these normal schools 

53 



have done for the United States, they should do also for Argentina. 
The Normal of Parana is the first of these schools and the money 
spent in its inauguration is a proof of the wise investment of what- 
ever funds shall be destined for popular education." 

The success of Stearns was so marked at Parana that by a gov- 
ernment decree of January 14, 1875, he was transferred to Tucu- 
man to open the second normal. Jose M. Torres, his successor at 
the Parana school, was a great admirer of North American educa- 
tion. The greatest addition to the institution was made in 1884 
when it was decided to call Mrs. Sara C. Eccleston to open the first 
kindergarten in South America. She had graduated with high 
honors from the, Kindergarten Training School of Philadelphia 
and served with great success in several schools, including the 
Winona Normal, distinguished for her culture, love of children 
and ability in teacher training. What an impress has this good 
woman left on Parana and all Argentina! 

The kindergarten idea spread throughout Argentina. It aroused 
most strenuous opposition, and attacks through the press and oth- 
erwise were most severe. But the demand for teachers was so- 
great that Mrs. Eccleston was called to Buenos Aires to found a 
training school for kindergarten teachers. Here she carried on 
her work, until she retired because of age. She continued to live 
in Buenos Aires, always honored and revered, until her death 
only three years ago. 

With such an inheritance it is no wonder that Parana is far in 
advance of many other parts of Argentina in the matter of educa- 
tion. The Normal School now has about a thousand pupils, two- 
hundred and fifty in the normal department and seven hundred and 
fifty in the Model School. There has just been created by the 
national government a superior normal course or Teachers' Col- 
lege, which will give a still higher course, preparing teachers for 
professorships in secondary and professional schools. This "Fac- 
ulty of the Sciences of Education" is a part of the new "Univer- 
sidad Litroal," which will have its departments of Medicine and 5 
Engineering located in the city of Rosario and the Faculty of Law 
in the city of Santa Fe. The Faculty of the Sciences of Education 
has already been opened with a splendid lot of professors, with 
whom it was my privilege to meet in session, and discuss the plans 
of the institution. The courses lead to three degrees, Doctor in 
Philosophy and Pedagogy, Professor in University Teaching and 
Professor of Secondary, Normal and Special Instruction. Thus it 

. . 54 



will be seen that this faculty will provide post-graduate work for 
the graduates of the Normal, just as Teachers' College of Colum- 
bia University provides advanced courses for graduates of our 
state normal schools. 

And so the souls of the Stearns and the Ecclestons and the 
others who left the comforts of home and friends to come to far 
away Parana — their souls go marching on! Some two thousand 
teachers have been trained here and sent out over South America. 

The Republic of Paraguay, 'way up in the heart of South 
America, with its capital city a thousand miles from Buenos Aires, 
is hungry indeed for fellowship; with the outside world. Paraguay 
recognizes that friendship with the United States is almost her 
only hope, for her larger neighbors are interested only in her 
commercial exploitation. Educational representatives of the 
United States are sure of a hearty welcome. The proudest pos- 
session of the people of Asuncion, which is shown to every visitor, 
is the libarary of twelve hundred of the best American books, 
recently presented to them by the Carnegie Foundation. This 
library is housed in the Institute Paraguayo — a splendid organiza- 
tion through which the Paraguayan educators are seeking to do 
something for the community by means of night classes, gymnasia, 
etc. At a lecture before this institute I had a reception that will 
never be forgotten. The President of the Republic, the Minister 
of Public Instruction and the leading educational figures of the 
country were greatly interested in discussing how the educational 
forces of the United States might co-operate more closely with 
Paraguay in the solution of her difficult educational problems. The 
Colegio International, recently opened by one of the North Am- 
erican mission boards and now having eight American teachers, is 
looked upon by Paraguayan educators as a great contribution to 
their life. 

Uruguay is not much larger than Paraguay, but it is favorably 
situated on the Atlantic side of the continent and is in many ways 
the most progressive republic of Latin America. President Brum 
is a young man but a few years removed from his student activi- 
ties. He was a great leader among the students of South Am- 
erica in his college days and is still looked upon by them as their 
guide and counsellor. He is well known for his advocacy of Pan 
Americanism and for his rejection of the idea that the United 
States is desirous of exercising hegemony over all of Latin 
America. Since this "idea has in the past been quite generally 

55 



accepted among the student classes, President Brum's repudiation 
of it has had a most salutary influence. On his trip to the United 
States in 1917 he took special interest in our educational system 
and has on many occasions applied American ideas in his own 
country. Montevideo is the Hague of South America, many inter- 
national movements having their headquarters there. 

The University of Montevideo is one of the most liberal in South 
America. It maintains close contact with North American educa- 
tional progress. One of its professors has recently become a sec- 
retary of the Young Men's Christian Association and is using his 
wide influence to get students to come to the United States. A 
party of these students recently arrived with a special greeting 
from the university to the Mayor of the City of New York. There 
are already a number of Uruguayan students in the United States 
and they are making a splendid name for themselves. They will 
return home with the power to present North American educational 
ideals to have them adopted in a larger way than at present. The 
public schools of Uruguay have recently been reorganized and 
show many marks of the North American system. 

The Brazilian government has shown its desire for closer con- 
nections with the United States by a recent law providing for the 
sending of about one hundred students to our universities each 
year for special study. It was my privilege not long ago, on receipt 
of a cable from Brazil, to : meet thirty-two of these students, all of 
whom are now in this country attending various universities and 
preparing to carry our ideas and ideals back to Brazil. 

The two outstanding phases of North American education are, 
of course, the standardizing of the grade system, covering our 
primary and secondary courses, and of the college requirements 
for the baccalaureate degree. It is in these chiefly that our system 
has differentiated itself from the French, and even from the 
English. Since the development of these peculiarities seems to 
have been spontaneous rather than designed, it may reasonably 
be inferred that there is something in them peculiarly congenial to 
what in Spanish is called the ambiente of the New World. The 
American physical and social environment and the republican form 
of government have produced this educational system, developing 
it out of the basal ideas brought from Europe. Is it not reason- 
able, therefore, to infer that it will fit into the ambiente of other 
American republics better than will any strictly European order? 

Besides, it is inevitable that the educational leaders of Latin 

56 



America will more and more get their training in the United 
States. They will carry back with them not only admiration for 
our system but, what is even more to the point, a familiarity with 
,its organization and workins which will make it easier for them 
to strike out on these lines than on any other. The facility with 
which textbooks and school supplies may be adapted for use in 
Latin America is a practical matter which will also have a vast 
influence. It is perhaps not amiss to call the attention of authors 
and publishers to this immense new market for their standard 
textbooks. 

Nationalistic Tendencies 

As said before, I do not wish to give the idea that South Ameri- 
can educators are inclined to take over bodily our North American 
system. Their interest in it is simply to find what is best and adapt 
it to their own environment. 

Some of the leaders of Latin American countries see very 
plainly that each country should have a national system of educa- 
tion, and that it is a mistake on their part to ape foreign systems 
that disregard the national character. It is a striking fact that 
Bolivia, one of the most backward countries of Latin America, 
liidden away in the center of the continent, without outlet to the 
sea, has produced a writer who has been called the Rousseau of 
Latin America. Prof. Franz Tamayo, who has studied the science 
of education in different countries of Europe and America, has 
contributed a series of articles on a new national system of educa- 
tion for Bolivia that have attracted much attention all over South 
America. 

"For the last ten years," says Professor Tamayo, "we have fol- 
lowed attentively the evolution of education in Bolivia, both in the 
minds of the people and in the minds of its directors, and we have 
come to the conclusion that up to the present time their process of 
reasoning has been based on one or more false premises, and that 
we are steering without a compass and without a set course in this 
matter. 

"Judging by these false and puerile standards, the supreme aspi- 
ration of our pedagogues would be to make of our new countries 
new Frances and new Germanys, as if this were possible, disre- 
garding also a biological historical law, which is that history is 
never repeated, either in politics or in anything. 

"Up to the present, this has been a very easy system to follow, 

57 



since there has been nothing to do but to cop}' and trace, not even 
adapting any particular model to one's needs, but just taking an 
idea from France or a curriculum from Germany, or vice versa, 
without the use of ordinary discretion. 

"In the meantime we have wasted money and, what is far worse, 
time. We have made endless regulations and founded several 
institutions and the main question in the meanwhile remains intact 
and unanswered. 

"We should not go to Europe or anywhere out of Bolivia to 
solve our pedagogical problem. The question of education is above 
all a problem of high national psychology. 

"It remains then for us to create a national system of education ; 
that is to say, a pedagogy of our own, commensurate to our 
forces, in accordance with our habits, conforming to our natural 
tendencies and tastes and in harmony with our moral and physical 
conditions." , 



In the four movements discussed are by no means contained all 
the demonstrations of the new spirit concerning social questions 
which pervades South America. Little groups for the study of 
economic problems and for ministering to the community are 
springing up everywhere. In many cases they are avowed follow- 
ers of the Soviet. The most widely circulated literature in Argen- 
tina is a series of pamphlets called "El Editorial Adelante" which 
are circulated by the hundreds of thousands. Many of these eulo- 
gize the Soviet government in Russia. Another important series 
of pamphlets is edited by "Tribuna Libre/ } which for a number of 
years has published monographs on such subjects as municipal 
problems, housing problems, socialism in Argentina, capital and 
justice, technical education for workmen, prison reform. Many 
of these pamphlets are lectures given before the "Museo Social 
Argentino," which is the organization that invited President 
Roosevelt to South America and every year arranges a series of 
lectures from distinguished foreigners and Argentines on social 
and international questions. 

This reminds one of the general demand from the reading public 
for a fresh literature. They are weary of erotic French fiction on 
the one hand and of standardized and rather antiquated philo- 
sophy and theology on the other. The hostility of the theologians 
toward modern science has held back the type of sociological, 

58 



pedagogical and humanitarian studies now so general in the Chris- 
tian world. Latin America has begun to demand her share. 
Books that help to make it possible to accept modern views of 
science, of sociology, anthropology, ethics, physics and the rest, 
without surrendering the Christian faith and without going to the 
extremes of social anarchy, are coming to be in great demand. 
No greater service can be rendered to South America than the 
furnishing of such literature. 



59 



V 

RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 

The more one studies the regligious problems of those countries- 
which have as their exclusive religious background that of the 
Roman Catholic Church, but which are now coming out into a 
modern life which is opposed to the strict interpretations and limi- 
tations of that system, the more he is baffled by the complexity of 
the question. He easily becomes persuaded that it offers more 
difficulties than any other religious problem of modern times. The 
apalling difference between the ideas of the North American and. 
the South American on this subject was brought to me afresh and 
more intensely at a dinner that I recently attended in the city of 
Buenos Aires with three of the leading intellectuals of the con- 
tinent. The published works of one of these gentlemen have 
already run above the half million mark in a continent where 
scientific and literary works average an edition of a thousand. As 
a professor in the university he gave a few years ago a series of 
lectures on the teachings of Emerson and New England morality, 
which challenged the youth of Argentina to a new moral life. 
Another of these gentlemen is the author of the best work on the 
sociology of Latin America, professor of law in the university, 
member of one of the supreme courts of Argentina, and a constant 
public advocate of the necessity of improving 'the moral atmos- 
phere of his country. The other friend has been for many years 
a recognized leader in public secondary education in his country. 
He has written two books describing education in the United 
States, after a residence of several years in that country, and is a 
strong factor in the social betterment of his people. All of them 
read North American literature and keep abreast of the world 
movements in an exceptional way. 

This group might fairly be considered representative of the 
highest and best of South American intellectual life. We talked 
for more than three hours, largely about the religious question. 
But when we finished, I felt we had been talking a wholly different 
language. Having spent several years in studying the spiritual 
problems of these countries, I thought that I could appreciate the 
views of the intellectual, at least. Yet it seemed that we were ten 
thousand miles apart ! "When you ask us to be religious, you are 
asking us to be immoral. Religion is organized evil. We fight 

60 



religion as we fight all other enemies of progress." Thus these 
men argued. When urged that they should not class all religion with 
the form that they had known, they replied, in substance: "We 
understand that you connect religion with morality. And since 
we, individually, have read your books and know your people, we 
can, by interrupting our natural chain of thought and explaining 
to ourselves, understand that you are reasonable, when you ask us 
to consider religion. But the fact remains that, as South Ameri- 
cans, with the example before us of what religion has been here, 
we have no interest in, scarcely any patience with, your religious 
appeal. We desire to be more noble, more honest, more interested 
in our fellow men, more spiritual, if you please. But we cannot 
realize naturally in our consciousness, though we might give intel- 
lectual assent while you are here to explain, that religion can pos- 
sibly help in the solution of either our personal or our national 
problems. You will reach us far better by the appeal which takes 
us where we are and faces frankly our own situation, as did our 
great moral preacher, Agustin Alvarez, than you will by suggest- 
ing some ethereal matter that takes for granted a religious back- 
ground which is altogether foreign to us. An appeal to the Bible 
has no authority with us. As to Christ, we have known Him as 
either an effeminate sentimentalist or the martyr of a lost cause. 
If we are to accept Him, He must be shown to us in a different 
light." 

Such I understood to be the main gist of our conversation. But, 
as I say, I was so confused by the very difference with which we 
used common terms and the seeming impossibility of making each 
other understand, that I have never been able to clarify in my 
own mind the real significance of what they were saying to me. 
And most probably they had less idea of what I was trying to 
convey to them. Try as we would to get together, our grand- 
fathers, with all the differences of inheritance, were fighting to 
keep us apart; and their defeat could not be accomplished except 
by a process much longer and more exacting than a conversation 
around a dinner table. 

A little while before that dinner in Buenos Aires, I sat in a club 
in Santiago de Chile with a professor of the university. Interna- 
tional relations, labor questions, student exchanges were interest- 
ingly discussed. It was midnight when we came to touch the 
question of the spiritual world and our own attitude toward it. 
This man is a believer in New England morality and recommends 

61 



to his students the reading of the Bible and attendance at Chris- 
tian schools in the United States. He is a friend of the North 
American mission schools and a constant advocate of Christian 
principles. But, when he opened his soul and let me see its own 
barrenness, the cold, clammy air of the night descended upon me, 
till I shuddered with the darkness and dampness. Religion, a good 
thing for society; the Bible, a great literary and moral book; but 
God, life after this life, communion with a higher Power— all that 
is only a creation of human fancy! Saddest of all about this 
friend, whom through the years I have learned to love for his 
great work for students, is the fact that his background and envir- 
onment are so hard that it seems almost hopeless to try to find 
entrance for the warm evangelical truth that would make him a 
marvelous spiritual power, recognized over the whole continent. 

I will not cite more examples of the many conversations held 
recently in South America with some of the greatest men I have 
met on any continent, concerning the great problems of the soul — 
with men who are as earnest as any North American ever dared 
be in their desire to serve their generation. These illustrations are 
sufficient to serve as a background to an endeavor to; survey briefly 
the present situation of religion in South America. This endeavor 
is made in all humility. For it is made, as already intimated, with 
a conviction that the combination of rapid material progress and 
sudden contact with the outside world, on the one hand, and the 
persistence of a mediaeval ecclesiasticism on the other, presents the 
most difficult religious problem of today. It is also made with a 
more profound realization than ever before of the great, the baf- 
fling difficulty which confronts an Anglo-Saxon, with all his cen- 
turies of liberal background, when he tries to understand spiritual 
conditions in South America, complicated as they are by age-long 
teachings and disciplines such as no other peoples have experienced. 

The Strength and Weakness of the Roman Catholic 

Church 

We are accustomed to speak of the loss of faith in the Church 
by the men of Latin America to such an extent that we are likely 
to think that this means that the Church itself is weak and deca- 
dent. But the universal testimony gained on my most recent trip 
is that the Church is at present more active and influential than 
for many years. It is not gaining in spiritual power and in moral 
strength, but has awakened to its threatened loss of direction of 
the nation's life and is moving (one can hardly resist the common 

62 



expression, "heaven and hell") every possible piece of machinery 
to strengthen its hold. I can never forget the repeated references 
to "estos Senores" (these gentlemen) made by a distinguished 
educationalist who referred to the powers represented in the 
Cathedral, as we passed that building again and again in our walks 
around the beautiful Plaza Mayo one night, when most other 
people had retired and we had full field for opening our hearts to 
each other. What the Cathedral represented to him was the black- 
est fact in Argentine life. It was an influence that seldom comes 
out into the open, but whose silent, hidden power is everywhere 
reaching out to stop any proposed reform movement, social, edu- 
cational, industrial or religious. It had even bec-n shrewd enough 
to link up with the radical government, which ordinarily is at the 
opposite end of the pole from them. But the radical government, 
composed of the working men largely, untrained in the art of 
governing, and sadly in need of some force that can exert a stabil- 
izing influence to keep it in power, has been glad to listen to the 
voice of the hierarchy and form a partnership with it, to hold the 
country in line. 

The Church is making every effort to checkmate the develop- 
ment of various social movements. Its opposition to the working- 
men's and student organizations, which have recently united to 
work for a changed order, has drawn heavy fire from these 
organizations. This is brought out in a lecture given by Prof. 
Telemaco Susini, a well known member of the faculty of the 
University of Buenos Aires, recently before a great crowd of 
students and workmen in Cordova. The lecture is published in a 
series of booklets which are circulated by the tens of thousands 
in Argentina. The title of the lecture is "Social Problems and the 
Catholic Church." The following extracts from Prof. Susini's 
lectures may be looked upon as the general attitude of these im- 
portant groups toward the Church ; though it must be recognized 
that the Church has itself succeeded in organizing other groups of 
students who, under the direction of the clergy, fight for the 
Church. 

"I salute you with more enthusiasm because, as I have said on 
other occasions, the University movement in Cordova has been 
the beginning of a social revolution which has brought about unity 
of action between the workmen and the students. I salute you, 
united in one desire, the love of humanity, and in the indomitable 

63 



purpose to constitute an immovable wall against which will be 
stiattered all the serried attacks of corruption and violence of your 
common enemy. This union has been made the basis of attacks 
on the students. With the principle that the end justifies the 
means, tne enemy has called trie workmen anarchists and thereby 
has stigmatized the student movement as tending toward anarch- 
ism. Hence the contention that the government ought to apply 
the law to the workmen and stop the reforms in university organi- 
zation. Besides this, but with the same object in view, two organi- 
zations have been created for the purpose of combatting this al- 
leged anarchy and threatened disorder, to wit: the Argentine 
Catholic Union, which is to bring us social peace by means of 
reciting prayers, and the Argentine Patriotic League, which, for 
its part, is to bring peace by means of violence in combination with 
the Catholic Union, with which it is so clearly identified*." 

According to a leading Argentine citizen, one of the most 
powerful influences in his country is the body of alumni 
of the Jesuit College of Buenos Aires. No public position is 
filled without their having a hand in it; no bill is presented to 
Congress without their attitude being made felt; no educational 
change is proposed without taking steps to shape it according to 
their liking. 

The circle of higher class women is another powerful force 
used by the clergy to kill any new movement that apparently tends 
to cast reflection on the old order. The inside machinations of 
the priests, which generally direct the "Women's Clubs" of the 
higher classes are so full of narrowness and deceit that it is a 
standing wonder that they can "put it over." 

The development of the temperance movement in Argentina is 
full of illustrations of the way the Church tries to control modern 
movements, when it sees they are inevitable. The higher class 
women have become very much interested in the movement, as 
have the middle class. The "Damas Distinguidas" have here- 
tofore spurned association with the school teacher class who were 
working for the common cause of temperance. Yet the "Damas" 
were recently led by their clerical advisors to combine with the 
teacher organization with the object of eliminating the Protestant 



* The Catholic Union is a kind of Knights of Columbus that represents 
the Catholics in public matters. The Argentine Patriotic League is an organ- 
ization of conservative forces that makes itself responsible for the persecu- 
tion of liberal forces. 

64 



secretary sustained by a North American temperance organiza- 
tion, and get control of the building that it was proposed to erect 
to house the various temperance activities. It was considered 
a great triumph recently when a Roman Catholic clergyman ap- 
peared on the same platform with the Methodist bishop in Buenos 
Aires on the occasion of a reception to the visiting president of 
the North American society. But the inside story of the machin- 
ations of the clericals, so that the whole affair might resound to 
the glory of the Church, are beyond belief among circles unin- 
formed on these matters. 

In Buenos Aires the Church is finding many ways to checkmate 
the rapid growth of the Young Men's Christian Association, which 
with nearly 4,000 members and its influence reaching out through 
the university, business and industrial circles, is becoming danger- 
ous. So the recent encyclical of the Pope against the Association 
was used by the clergy to create a fresh attack. One of the small 
ways in which this attack became evident was in a movement for 
bringing cheer to the inmates of the city hospitals recently, one of 
the many evidences of the awakened altruism of the Argentines. 
The Young Men's Christian Association was requested to join 
the movement, as was the president of a large Roman Catholic 
Woman's Society. As soon as the latter found that the Association 
had accepted, her own support and that of her society were with- 
drawn. 

The effect of this constant fighting of everything outside of 
the Church easily explains the attitude of the intellectuals, already 
described. When young men who are members of the Associa- 
tion and understand its broad program of service, hear their 
mothers telling about checkmating the organization here and 
there, at the direction of their parish priests, the young men are 
naturally disgusted with the Roman Church. But they are prob- 
ably not in position to appreciate the need of following up the 
evangelical side of religion. For it must be remembered that if 
they should choose to go to some evangelical church, thev would 
likelv find the service most distasteful to them, with its bleak and 
foreign surroundings and its preaching directed to a congregation 
which is of much lower intelligence and accustomed to a termin- 
ology entirely foreign to the student. 

In Brazil, as in Argentina, the Church is working with other 
conservative forces to develop the spirit of nationalism and to 
exclude all movements that look toward progress and world rela- 

65 



tions. In the name of patriotism, the most reactionary programs 
are being fostered. A few illustrations will show how varied 
these efforts are. One is against the Portuguese, especially the 
fishermen, who have long made their center in Brazil, and are 
among the most industrious people in the country. The move- 
ment has become so strong that one of the dailies of Rio de Janeiro 
has taken up the fight for the Portuguese and is showing up what 
is really back of the movement. Recently the bishop of Marianna 
issued a pastoral in which he said that the North American mis- 
sionaries were secret employees of the United States government, 
working for ' 'peaceful penetration" of the Yankees. While charges 
of this kind have often been made by parish priests, this public 
declaration of a bishop was considered serious enough for the 
American ambassador to deny it in an open letter. The Protestants 
in Brazil, who now count among their friends and membership 
some of the best people of the country, are planning to request 
the national senate to open an inquiry on the subject so that the 
public may learn the whole truth about the matter. The fact 
that the Evangelical Church in Brazil has largely srrown away 
from the leadership of foreigners and is very much of a Brazilian 
institution, with its own national leadership of recognized power, 
makes this kind of a statement particularly obnoxious. The fol- 
lowing are extracts from this pastoral : 

"To entrust children to heretical teachers or to heterodox 
schools, is to put them on the direct road to eternal condemnation. 
Fathers and mothers you would never send your children, for 
any consideration in the world, to the house of small-pox, leprous 
or consumptive patients, for fear of their contracting the sickness 
and losing their lives. How have you the heart to send them to 
schools where almost certainly they are to lose their faith and 
life eternal ? Parents who act thus, commit a very grave sin against 
the love and care that they owe their children, and are traitors 
to God, who entrusted the children to them that they might be 
put in the way of His service and to heaven, whereas they really 
put them in the way of the service of His enemies and to hell. 
Such parents incur, in a special way, the greater excommunication 
reserved to the Pope, seeing they are factors of heresy, because 
entrusting children to those schools is a manifest protection given 
to the same and to the cause for which it strives. 

"Above this reason of natural order, which for a Christian ought 

66 



to be above all reasons, there is one of human order, which for us 
Brazilians speaks louder than the highest of earthly considera- 
tions : it is the love of our country, Brazil. If we desire a country 
truly free, mistress of her own destiny and governing herself, 
by herself, with dependence on, or wardship from, no nation 
whatsoever, however friendly such an one may be proclaimed to 
be, we cannot favor, but rather oppose a tenacious and irrecon- 
cilable resistance to the Protestant propaganda, whose principal 
end in view is to establish the North American dominion in our 
Brazil. Of this, there is today no possible doubt and the only one 
who will not confess it is the one who has some interest in dis- 
simulating what is before the eyes of all. 

"It is not the love of the truth that induces the American sects 
to spend in their Protestant propaganda sums so large that they 
mount up to millions of dollars. If it is the love of their neighbor 
and the love of God that brings them to be missionaries to us, 
as with badly dissimulated feigning they affirm, why do they not make 
use of this charity in bringing to better terms the unfaithful who 
abound in the United States more than in any other country in the 
world that calls itself Christian? From the statistics of that Re- 
public it is known that there are living there sixtv millions of 
men without religion, without baptism, with no religious belief. 
There are more heathen there than in all the other American re- 
publics put together. In Brazil we are all (na totalidado) baptized, 
by the grace of God, and almost all believe in our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and profess the Catholic religion, in which we were born 
and in which we want to die. Protestants know perfectly that 
we are saved in our religion, just as we know that for them sal- 
vation is impossible, unless it be that an invincible good faith may 
defend them at the divine judgment seat." 

The most successful reactionary movement has been one which 
the hierarchy has initiated in education, which it is thought has 
for its object the putting of all schools, both private and public, 
under a course of studv that will effectually shut out foreign ideas 
and maintain the status quo of all instruction. The first move- 
ment toward this has alreadv been made and has resulted in the 
closing of the Deoartments of Ph?rmacv and Dentistrv of Gran- 
berv College, a Methodist school that for a quarter of a century 
has been recognized both by the Brazilian government and the 
public as a most useful and modern educational institution. The 
closing of these schools was secured by demanding, according to 

67 



some forgotten "blue law," the maintenance of a corps of na- 
tional professors three times as large as at present. It being 
financially impossible to comply with the demand, the schools 
had to close. The same action is now being taken against Macken- 
zie College, a still better known evangelical school, which counts 
among its graduates many of the outstanding government officials 
and professional men of Brazil. The question was being warmly 
debated in the daily papers when I was in Brazil, the first days of 
June, 1921. The new educational law was soon to be reported and 
the educational leaders in liberal circles were getting ready to 
study it carefully, not only in general principle, but especially for 
the "jokers" which would be hidden away in insignificant phrases, 
to be interpreted for the limitation of freedom when the proper 
time arrived. 

It seems strange that liberal forces in Brazil, where the con- 
stitution provides for separation of Church and State and where 
the movement of Positivism grew so strong in the early days of 
the republic, this country being the only one in America where 
a Positivist church was actually built, are now fearing a great 
sweep of reaction and fanaticism. On the other hand, in countries 
like Peru, Chile and Paraguay, where there has been not only a 
state Church but a very strong clerical influence, there is now a 
strong liberal current. 

In Paraguay one of the most exciting measures before the 
present Congress is a divorce law. This was introduced as the 
result of a widely advertised scandal, when a priest in Asuncion 
ruined a young woman of his parish. The Church is fighting the 
divorce law, as it always does. It represents a dangerous break 
from authority. Noted ecclesiastical orators from Buenos Aires 
have recently been brought to Asuncion to give public lectures on 
questions of religious authority. Some of the liberals believe 
that not only will the divorce law be passed, but that there will 
soon follow the separation of Church and State. A footnote on 
this question was the recent withdrawal of permission of the 
Protestant forces to have open air meetings in the plaza. When 
their cause was championed by the local press the permission was 
restored, and the meeting attended by great crowds of liberal 
sympathizers, who afterward went to the preacher and asked 
to join his organization "because they were against the Catholics" 
(a proposition which the minister of course refused, explaining 
that this was not what his organization represented). A foreign 

68 



priest told me that he hoped the Church would be disestablished 
as that was the only way it would develop any strength. He said 
that at present the Church only received some $25,000 pesos Para- 
guayan annually from the State, and the limitations which the State 
imposed made the bargain unprofitable to the Church. This priest 
was strong in his condemnation of the Church in Paraguay. He 
said there were a number of saints in Paraguay not known to the 
rest of the Catholic world, and that the baptismal records of his 
parish showed about eighty per cent, of the children illegitimate. 

In Uruguay the Constitution adopted in 1917 provided for the 
separation of Church and State. Many believe that this has been 
a great benefit to the Church, which now for the first time has 
its own Archbishop and seemingly is commanding a more loyal 
support from its membership. The head of the Catholic party 
in Uruguay is one of the most noted authors and most honored 
citizens of South America, Dr. Juan Zorilla de San Martin. One 
of his sons is a priest and Dr. Zorilla himself gives much time to 
the affairs of the Church. He is one of the few intellectuals of 
the continent who is frankly and enthusiastically a Catholic and 
a supporter of the Church as it exists in his own country. There 
is no question that he is a pious Christian who believes earnestly 
in his Church and is willing to sacrifice for it. During my recent 
visit at his study he excused himself twice to have brief confer- 
ences with priests, who came to consult him on matters of the 
Church. The recent loss of the support of the State has probably 
made men like Dr. Zorilla still more loyal in giving personal sup- 
port. 

In Chile the reform government was elected on a platform which 
contained a plank demanding the separation of Church and State. 
The fight for other more pressing, if not more important, reforms 
and the very close balance of power between Liberals and Con- 
servatives will probably prevent this issue being brought up in the 
present administration. But the question of the Church's power 
will be at issue in almost every question that Congress faces in 
the next few years. The Civil Marriage Law has just been 
strengthened by a declaration that in every case, the civil ceremony 
must be celebrated first, the religious ceremony to follow, when 
desired. 

The three great movements toward modern life, which are 
now most prominent in Chile, the labor movement, the tem- 
perance movement and the feminist movement, are all full of 

69 



dynamite for the Church. And no one is so aware of it as the 
hierarchy. The labor movement, of course, carries with its attack 
on all predatory interests an open fight on the Church, which is 
one and the same in leadership as the hundred or more families 
of the aristocracy which have ruled Chile in the past. The temper- 
ance movement, supported by labor and the present government, 
is opposed by the Church because, for one reason, it has extensive 
vineyards, the wines from which contribute largely to its revenues. 
As for the feminist movement, independence of women would 
mean the losing of the great stronghold of the Church, which, 
in the past has held fast when all others have failed. Since the 
reform government favors all three of these movements which 
have ramifications running into every problem of national life, 
it can be easily seen that Chile is in for a very severe struggle 
around the Church problem during the next few years. As the 
clergy in that country has been of the highest intellectual and 
moral order of any in Latin America, and the influence of the 
Church has been therefore relatively of a high order, it can be 
seen that this fight will be of more than national interest. 

In Peru, the most important book of the year is one entitled 
"The First Century," with the sub-title "Geographical, Political 
and Economic Causes That Have Affected the? Moral and Material 
Progress of Peru in the First Century of Her Independence." 
It is a frank and enlightening study by Pedro Davalos y Lisson. 
In his chapter on religion, the author speaks first of how the 
Church has fallen from its ancient glory. He then calls atten- 
tion to the very low classes from which the priests are drawn 
today. Since the Church lacks its former prestige, none of the 
best families wish their sons to enter the priesthood, hence only 
the poorest, from the interior towns, become candidates. "Those 
of us who were born under Divine favor and who still give warmth 
in our hearts to the beauties and sweetness of religion see with 
deep pain the way that this spiritual world is disappearing," says 
this author, a faithful Catholic. As to the priests in the country 
districts, while some of them do right, most of them are only 
interested in enriching themselves. They do nothing toward the 
social and moral betterment of the Indians, who remain in the 
same ignorance and superstitution as they were in the early 
colonial days. 

He continues as follows : "The attacks which the faithful make 
on their own priests are continual. The loss of a sacred object, 

70 



the removal of a picture from the church, or the removal to the 
sacristy of some saint that had a preferred place on the altar, 
causes violent outbreaks on the part of the believers, which cause 
the priests to hide themselves or seek the protection of the civil 
authorities. Certainly the faith that our country people have in 
their priests' honor is not very great, since they attack them and 
treat them like Church robbers, whenever anything disappears from 
the Church. 

"There is little to say about the labor of our Peruvian bishop. 
His virtue and his consecration find an insuperable obstacle in 
the spiritual quality of his sheep and the ignorance and vulgarity 
of a large part of his subordinates, the priests. As there is a 
great scarcity of clergy in Peru and therefore few priests who 
dispute the rights to a parish, the displacement of a priest is the 
most difficult of disciplines. It is necessary that a cure be com- 
pletely lost in vice before he is dismissed. What do the bishops 
not see in the visits of inspection! What prudence and wisdom, 
what patience and toleration they need to remedy things, when 
they can be remedied by kind and indirect means ! What other 
proceedings are they able to use among a people brutalized by 
alcohol, fornication, isolation, laziness, fanaticism and the most 
complete ignorance of the evangelical spirit? 

"If the major part of our bishops are given to fomenting the 
prestige of the Church, there are not lacking those who are high 
handed and fond of controversy with the Protestants and Liberals, 
answering them from the pulpit and through the press. The evil 
results and the scandal caused by such proceedings are evident. 
. . . These fighting bishops still excommunicate their mem- 
bers. This exclusion, which generally is accompanied by severe 
orders that the sacraments be withheld from those expelled from 
the Church, has given rise to disorders which made necessary 
the use of the police, especially when the fanatical elements have 
arisen in hostile attitude against the Indians of the highlands to 
exterminate them and their kinspeople after they have been robbed 
of their possessions. . . . While such things occur frequent- 
ly in the country, in Lima it may be said there are no saints. Yet 
we have heard the fanatical women and sacristans assured that 
in the Prado Church there is a crucified Christ that continually 
sweats." 

Peru has recently passed a law concerning civil marriage and 
divorce, which provides for the imprisonment of the clergyman 

71 



who performs a marriage without previously demanding the ciwil 
certificate. This law was of course greatly opposed by the 
hierarchy. i 

Yet the Church occupies at present a stronger position poHticailr- 
ly than it has done for years. The most prominent representafis^- 
of clericalism in Peru; has been recently appointed president of tbe 
Chamber of Deputies, and the President of the republic is a strcmgr- 
conservative who has already shown signal favors to the CliurcfeL 
Among other things he vetoed the new divorce law referred to 
above, and modified in the interests of clerical education the orig- 
inal draft of the new law of instruction. While it is the case 
that the Roman Catholic Church is so menacingly strong political- 
ly, there are absolutely no signs of any renewed spiritual vigor 
within the pale of the native Peruvian Church. In a recent comror- 
sation with an Augustinian friar he declared that there was no sudh. 
thing in Peru as truly spiritual life or conviction, that the apparent 
devotion to the Church was nothing more than a mixture of tra- 
dition and social convenience. It is affirmed on the testfnaooy 
of some of the most impartial and thoughtful Peruvians that fee 
present dearth in Peru of outstanding public leaders of a robust 
liberal type, men willing to sacrifice everything for their prin- 
ciples, is due to the fact that the present generation of politicians 
and literary men has been educated almost exclusively in clerical 
institutions. It is a strange fact that the special ambassador sessft 
by the Argentine to represent that republic on the occasion of flae- 
recent centennial celebrations in Peru should be the Roman Catli- 
olic Archbishop of Buenos Aires. 

The Church's power is shown in different ways. A young 
Peruvian who recently graduated from the University of Wis- 
consin, on returning to Lima with his new ideas, started a papar 
for children, probably the first one of the kind ever published ma 
that country. It was immediately recognized by parents *mH 
teachers as a most important help in the development of tlae 
children. But it was printed at an evangelical shop. This was 
sufficient for the Church's disapproval. Although the priest 
assigned to the matter admitted that there was nothing about tine 
paper that was sectarian, and that its articles all had a good 
moral and spiritual tone, the paper must be killed. And killed it 
was. One of the three women in Peru who believe sufficiently in> 
the emancipation of women to advocate the matter in public, is 
struggling along with a little school where she trains girls t»- 

72 



make hats, dresses and other things to give them economic inde- 
pendence, as well as giving them a modern intellectual develop- 
ment. But because she refuses to let the priest come and give 
religious instruction, and will not take her girls to mass, she is 
deprived of help, and is obliged to pay the extra expenses for the 
school out of her own small income from her family. Some little 
time ago the priests, knowing of her influence, offered to make 
her the director of a paper for women, give her a modern press, 
and assure her of an income of $500 per month, if she would put 
in the editorials they brought to her already written. She refused 
to be a party to any transaction that would not give her freedom 
to express her liberal ideas. The Minister of Instruction has just 
offered her the directorship of one of the big Girls' Normal 
Schools. At first she thought she must accept. But afterward she 
realized that this would mean that her own little school would 
Jhen have to close, and she herself would have to allow the priests 
to come to the government school, under her direction, and give 
religious instruction. If she resisted, as she would be compelled 
to do, she would have the Church against her and most prob- 
ably be discharged. Again she decided to stay with her own little 
school and fight the tremendous opposition of the Church, which is 
able to cut off all her support except the little she gets from the 
poor girls who attend the school and the amount she herself can 
put into it. 

As has been said elsewhere : "Peru will find as other Latin 
American countries have found, that they cannot go far in de- 
veloping any kind of democratic life till they have* an open fight 
with the Church to compel her to keep her hands out of politics. 
Just as Lincoln said, that it is impossible for a people to live half 
slave and half free, so it is impossible for a nation to have political 
liberty and ecclesiastical domination. ' Peru is still too saturated 
with the Jesuitical spirit in Church and State to have produced 
the leaders necessary to construct a reallv honest, conservatively 
liberal regime. With such a wonderful history and such a long 
line of brilliant men, with such a splendid list of idealists, Peru 
is coming to the celebration of the centenary of her independence 
with a realization that she has few actual accomplishments to 
celebrate. It is a sad situation. For one will find no more lovable, 
no more idealistic, no more brilliant and attractive people anywhere 
than are the Peruvians. As friends, as traveling companions, as 
members of an intellectual circle, as Don Quijotes, ready to issue 

73 



forth to help the weak, their superiors are not to be found. But 
the dynamic is not there. In this hundredth year of Peruvian 
independence, with all their great political, social, economic, edu- 
cational and spiritual problems before them, there does not seem 
to be one man who towers above the multitude like the Apostle 
Paul, and says 'I' can do things.' For there is not one of Peru's 
great men that would think of saying 'through Christ, who 
strengtheneth me.' Peru's Christ is a dead Christ. It is the 
'Sweating Image' that is carried in a casket, weak, defeated, cry- 
ing for pity." 

The objections of well balanced liberals of South America is 
fairly summed up in the following words of Agustin Alvarez, 
often called the Emerson of South America, and probably the most 
influential moral philosopher the continent has produced : 

"This liberal Protestantism, leaving to man his aptitude and 
amplitude for lay progress, has formed the colonizing races which, 
by their greater resources dominating nature and exploiting the 
soil, have enriched and extended themselves to all continents. In 
the same way Catholicism, repudiating profane science, and cap- 
tured by attention to public worship, has separated the best energies 
of man, has withdrawn him from improved means of agriculture, 
commerce and industry, from personal cleanliness and public 
sanitation, from earthly justice and civil morality. 

"The Metropolis did us greater harm by prohibiting in America 
the cultivation of ideas and the sentiments of tolerance than it did 
us by prohibiting the cultivation of the vine and the olive. If the 
primary cause of the progress of man is the thought of man which 
modifies his sentiments and forms his character, a man limits his 
progress in the degree to which he limits his thought. So the 
fundamental cause of the backwardness of Spanish America, and 
of Spain itself was, and is yet, the 'restriction of thought by an 
absurd religion. 

"The spirit cultivated by one idea only, like the field sown with 
only one seed, cannot produce more than one kind of fruit, one 
kind of ideas and sentiments, the same that have been sown. The 
Disciple of the Jesuit, with one side of his spirit filled with narrow 
ideas, and the other empty ; with lights aglow and lights prohibited, 
is like a nun, the nun with a lean spirit, half in darkness and half 
in superstition — as Renan defines her, 'Very religious, and at the 
same time very little instructed, consequently very superstitious.' 

74 



A mule with an unbalanced load, which leans constantly to the side 
of the greater weight, finally leaves the road, and strikes across 
the country. Thus the political or religious sectarian, unbalanced 
by his one-sided provision of ideas, abandoning the right road, 
traversing foreign territory, is comparable to intellectual mules 
unevenly loaded with good and bad ideas. Thus narrow and 
superstitious Catholicism, the open enemy of profane science, 
and the advocate of lay ignorance, develops a spirit incapable of 
self-government, because it is educated in dogmatic intolerance 
and spiritual slavery, which are the spiritual father and mother of 
this Spanish perverseness which we knew in 1810 and the Cubans 
knew in 1900. In the same way liberal Protestantism develops 
those spirits with self-rule, tolerant in action because they are 
educated to be tolerant in thought." 

Strictures of this kind are among the influences that are bringing 
about a decided reaction in the bosom of the Roman Catholic 
Church in South America. It is difficult to tell how far the re- 
actionary movements in the different South American countries are 
part of a thought-out plan on the part of the Papal authorities to 
regain absolute spiritual and political domination in these coun- 
tries. I can only speak for what I know is taking place in Peru, or 
rather indicate certain facts that appear to be symptomatic of a 
definite policy. 

One of the most significant facts in the religious life of Lima 
is the activity of a group of French priests of the order of La 
Recoleta — an order founded shortly after the French Revolution, — 
whose aim has been to take a practical interest in the social prob- 
lems of the community. It appears that, as a result of the clos- 
ing of the monasteries in France some twenty years ago, a wave 
of new life passed over the Roman Catholic Church in that coun- 
try. The watchword of the new movement became "Action," 
and a supreme effort has been made to win the youth of France 
for the Church. In recent years the movement has become in- 
tensified and two of its most interesting phases are, on the one 
hand, the publication of apologetic works in defense of orthodox 
views of the Scriptures and fundamental Church doctrines; and, 
on the other, a supreme emphasis upon simple evangelical doc- 
trines, such as, "The Life in Jesus Christ. ,, Some of the organs 
of this movement are: "Revue des Jeunes," "Revue Pratique D' 
Apologetique," and "Les Cahiers." So far as one can learn not 

75 



only have many of the finest youth of France been won but not 
a few prominent literary men, who have definitely embraced a 
religious life. 

I have not been able to find out just how far this movement is 
affecting South American Catholicism in general. The follow- 
ing facts, however, are significant; the group of French priests 
alluded to founded in 1918 the Catholic University of Peru; they 
have recently begun to publish a weekly pamphlet called "Catholic 
Action" ; under their auspices lectures have been given at different 
times on social and religious problems ; and a few months ago a 
special course of apologetics for women was inaugurated in the 
Catholic University. It is also worth while observing that a num- 
ber of the leading writers of the new generation today, such as, 
the brothers Garcia Calderon were educated by priests. There 
can be little doubt that it is only a matter of time until the Roman 
Catholic Church of France will begin an active campaign in the 
New World. Whether it has a strong enough dynamic ever to 
galvanize the Catholicism of South America, with its encrusta- 
tions of creolian superstitions, is a debatable question. But one 
thing is certain that South America will become a chosen mis- 
sion field for progressive French Catholicism, and the battlefield 
where the dogmatic conflict of ages as to the relative spiritual 
claims of Romanism and Evangelicalism must be decided prag- 
matically; and surely no true Christian who prays "Thy King- 
dom come," can be indifferent as regards the issue of the con- 
flict. 

The Moral Situation 

The lack of interest in the moral question is one of the most 
discouraging things in South American life. The dean of a law 
school recently declared that the faculty had nothing to do with 
the moral life of the student. In fact the universities take no 
official cognizance of the moral life of the student body. There 
is no directory kept of the students and the faculty have no idea 
where they live or what kind of lives they lead outside the class 
room. There are no dormitories. Students from out of town 
may live in a boarding house or may club together with other 
students in unsupervised quarters which too often have women 
connected with them, or they may live in any way, attending 
classes or not as they may see fit. So long as they present them- 
selves for examination, no questions are asked. There are, of 
course, notable exceptions to this rule, institutions in which indi- 

76 



wlual professors and officers of a university take a personal in- 
terest in the lives of the students. Where this is the case the 
young men have been splendidly responsive. 

The sexual problem among the students is, of course, most 
difficult. Fortunately there is noticeable here and there an awak- 
ening on this subject among the government medical and educa- 
£B»nal authorities. An Argentine sociologist has recently put the 
case of the youth and his father in this way : "Fathers desire to 
make their boys 'men' at an early age. In place of prolonging 
tfeeir innocence and their indifference to sexual matters they do 
nil they can to develop them. Boys of twelve are dressed in long 
trousers, taught the vile language of the street, instructed how 
to act in certain situations with women, familiarized with vice 
ttirough conversation and example, and finally are directly en- 
couraged toward it by the introduction of young girl servants 
into the house, the object of which is made clear. This is the 
explanation of the singular precocity of our youth. At fifteen 
to eighteen years of age they have nothing more to learn." 

The vices of gambling and drinking are shown by statistics, 
in those countries where obtainable, to be greatly on the increase. 
En Buenos Aires the amount wagered on horse racing rose from 
$27,474,626 in 1904 to $120,824,309 in 1913, (Argentine pesos). 
The lottery in Argentina sold tickets amounting to $1,000,000 
i5i 1893, and to $38,175,000 in 1913. In the same way criminal 
cases grew in Buenos Aires frorri 9,273 in 1909, to 14,984 in 1913. 
All of these increases are entirely out of proportion to the growth 
<yf the population in the periods mentioned. 

In Uruguay an extensive study of alcoholism has recently been 
made by the Director of Municipal Statistics, Dr. Juaquin de 
Salterain, in which he says that there are 10,000 places in the 
republic where liquor is sold, 3,000 in the capital and 7,000 in the 
rnral districts. This makes one drinking place foi every 128 
people, France alone surpassing this record with one for each 72 
iuiiabitants. Germany has one for every 246 people, England 
one for every 430, and Switzerland one for every 5,000. 

Referring to another moral problem, Agustin Alvarez says : 
"Sarmiento said that the greatest evil of Argentina was its great 
extent. But railroads have eliminated this evil and unified the 
country. Today the evil which besets the Republic is the lie, 
and it is necessary to work without rest to emancipate us from 

77 



this detestable South American institution, three- fourths Indian 
and four-fourths barbarian." In this connection it is interesting 
to note the phrase used commonly to assure the truth of a statement 
or to emphasize being on time for an appointment "paldbra de 
ingles/' and "hora ingles/' meaning "word of an Englishman" 
and "English hour." 

The Director of the National Libraryof Peru, Dr. Deustua, says : 

"Spain conquered Peru only to enrich herself, organizing a 
colony in which all, absolutely all, looked toward this end. . . . 
When we attained our political liberty,, the leaders of the Republic, 
without preparation for political life directly opposite to that of 
the colony, without force to create new forms of life, without 
other models than those offered by Spain, continued the same 
utilitarian regime which had originated all the disasters of our 
national life. Morality, true morality, has not reigned in the 
higher circles, and the country, which needs a heroic and continual 
struggle to "grow into a real entity, free from the past, has swung 
from dictator to revolution, which have engendered reciprocally the 
same political evils. This is why we find ourselves today stripped 
of real civilization — not because we find ourselves without power- 
ful industries, exploited a thousand times by commerce, but be- 
cause we find ourselves without the moral power necessary to 
organize ourselves and govern ourselves as a free people." 

In matters of pure culture there is probably no country in 
America that excels Peru. But poetry and philosophy and belles 
lettres have failed to educate the Indian, fell the forests, bridge the 
rivers, build railroads or create a body politic fit for self-govern- 
ment and self-development. This has become so evident to the 
Peruvians that it has become an obsession with them. As Sr. 
Pedro Davilas y Lisson says : "Unfortunately our pessimism is 
everywhere in evidence. Lamentation is the fashion, not the old 
men but the youthful constituting the great majority of the alarm- 
ists. The spirit of depression in which the young men live is so 
great, their enthusiasm is so suppressed, they find so few disposed 
to struggle and so many incapacitated to work for a great and 
prosperous Peru that they themselves have no dreams, no faith 
in their own power." 

Dr. Javier Prado, rector of San Marcos, a scholar of the first 
order, and the owner of the finest private museum that it has ever 

78 



been my privilege to see in any\ part of the world, recently said : 
"Peru after having been the seat of most wonderful civilizations, 
a center of government and of opulence during the Spanish dom- 
ination, has not developed during the hundred years of her 
autonomy in any adequate way her sources of natural vitality and 
economic well-being ; nor in the social and political order has she 
formed a vigorous and organized national life corresponding to 
the greatness of her past and to the progress obtained by other 
American peoples. Moral energies have been suppressed. Spir- 
itual oxygen is lacking in the environment of a people who so 
frequently show themselves sick in thought and sick in will." 

Dr. Manuel Cornejo, a well-known statesman, says : "The 
Peruvians are a sick people. This is revealed by all their history, 
which shows chronic disturbance. And this continuous upheaval 
cannot be ascribed to the disorder of growth. For in Peru, un- 
like other South American countries, we have a regressive evo- 
lution : We were more, now we are less ; they were less, now they 
are more." 

A remarkable book recently brought to my attention is "Moral 
para Intellectuales," written by Carlos Vaz Ferreira, the professor 
of philosophy in the University of Montevideo. It consists of a 
series of lectures given to the students of his class in the university, 
printed in the delightfully informal way in which he presented 
them. "Among the possible moral books," says this exemplary 
man, who is evidently intensely interested in the moral life of 
his students, "is one that some day I would like to write on 'Morals 
for Intellectuals.' For moral questions assume a very specific 
character for those who follow the different professions ; first, 
because every environment has different moral problems and, 
second, because the more highly developed the intelligence, the 
greater and more complicated become the moral problems. This 
book would follow these fundamental lines : First it would con- 
sider the special problems created by the intellectual life and then 
it would pursue the practical object of clarifying moral prin- 
ciples already admitted rather than attempt the creating of new 
ones." 

The first theme that Prof. Ferreira treats in these practical dis- 
cussions with his students is the need of a broad culture. He 
goes into the matter of the evils of the examination system, which 
compel the student to think of getting over a certain amount of 
ground, rather than of comprehending certain principles, thus 

79 



creating a tendency to look at the outward and not at the inward 
problems of life as those of most importance. In order to have 
a broad culture the student should not only study his texts, but 
should read a certain number of books suggested. A list of thirty 
is given with the suggestion that the students might acquire them 
as a common library and read an average of five each year, thus 
completing the thirty as they complete their university course. 
The following books are listed by the professor. He says that 
they are not to be regarded as the thirty "greatest" books, since 
any such arbitrary selection would be ridiculous. 

Guyau: Irreligion of the Future; Art from the Sociological 
Point of View; English Contemporary Morality; Problems of 
Ethics; Outline of a Moral System Without Obligation or Sanc- 
tion ; Education and Heredity. 

Fouillee: History of Philosophy ; Reform of the Teaching of 
Philosophy; Morality. 

Hoffdings: Ethics; History of Modern Philosophy; Contem- 
porary Philosophers. 

William James : Principles of Psychology ; Varieties of Re- 
ligious Experience. 

Radot : Life of Pasteur. 

Mills: Studies on Religion; Logic. 

Bergson: Creative Evolution. 

Paul de Saint Victor: Men and Gods. 

Anatole France : Garden of Epicurus ; Literary Criticism. 

The Four Gospels. 

Payot : Education of the Will. 

Montaigne: Essays. 

Rodo : Ariel. 

One who studies this list of books will make several interesting 
discoveries. First he will note the overwhelming predominance of 
French writers, nine out of fourteen. Most of these French 
authors are at least well enough known to us to realize that they 
are far from breathing that warm evangelical faith with which 
we should like to have our young men come in contact. The 
United States, England and Germany are each represented by 
one author. Only the one from the United States can be classed 
as having "religious tendencies." Only one of the authors is a 
South A_merican, Rodo of Uruguay. He preached a kind of 
glorified combination of Hellenism and Christianity as the ideal 

80 



religion needed by the Latin American youth, who must guard 
against North American materialism and develop an idealist cul- 
ture. 

No doubt Professor Ferreira would have referred to books in 
a class with "Rational Living," by Henry Churchill King, if such 
existed in Spanish; but they do not. In a report rendered to the 
Second Continental Convention of the Y. M. C. A. of South 
America is the following statement: "In reference to the read- 
ing of religious books, it may be said that practically there are 
few such books. There are no modern religious books of positive 
value, either Protestant or Catholic. Those winch the ciiurches 
have published have been generally a defense of tneir own creeds. 
The works of moralists which exist in Spanish are translations. 
The moral ideas of young men are those they find in their sur- 
roundings, without any ett'ort at changing. them. There are cer- 
tain writers such as Alvarez, Ley ret, Rodo, etc., who have en- 
deavored to change the atmosphere, calling attention to other 
aspects of life, especially the moral, but their efforts have been 
isolated and have not formed at all a school of thought following 
the moral point of view." 

The list of preferrtd authors writing on moral topics made up 
by readers in Argentina is as follows: French: Ribot, Bergson, 
Boutroux, Roussea, Renouvein ; English : Spencer, Mills, Bain 
Locke ; German : Schopenhauer, Hegel, Frichte, Kant, Wunt, 
Nietzche ; Italian : Ordigo, Vico, Croce ; American : William James. 

The rector of an Argentine university recently said : "Ten thou- 
sand people do the thinking for Argentina. There may be a hun- 
dred thousand who read French novels, but the reading of serious 
works is very limited." The number of publications in Buenos 
Aires, however, is stupendous, as can be readily seen by glancing 
at one of the newsstands found on nearly every corner in the city. 
Even in 1910 in the province of Buenos Aires there were 12,229 
publications, including forty-six dailies. 

The awakening of public officials to their responsibility in the 
matter of reading is seen, if faintly, in the following words from 
the message of a mayor of Buenos Aires : "The municipality is 
a factor of civilization. As such it should encourage all pro- 
gressive social movements and discourage retrogressive move- 
ments of vice, gambling and waste of time. If for this reason we 
encourage sport and the physical development of the people, it is 

81 



of no less importance that we foster public libraries as centers for 
intellectual diversion." 

In this message the mayor asks for the sum of 50,000 pesos, of 
which 20,000 is for the formation of "university extension" libra- 
ries and 16,000 for twenty children's libraries. He announces that 
there are now in the city thirty public libraries containing 336,436 
volumes. These had last year 173,682 readers and 85,555 books 
loaned for home use. Certainly this is not a good showing for a 
city of nearly two million people. 

Returning to the lectures of Professor Ferreira, we find that 
they are largely taken up with the moral problems of the lawyer, 
the physician, the journalist and the public official. The difficult 
moral situation in which each one of these professions places men 
is clearly and sympathetically treated. The inheritances of ages 
which permeate the atmosphere surrounding these professions with 
untruth and misrepresentation are clearly stated and adherence to 
moral principles demanded. Anyone who wishes to understand 
the moral stress under which the professional classes live will 
here find it graphically described. Of course the temptations of 
a lawyer or a physician in South America are shown to be much 
what they are in North America or in any other part of the world. 
Yet it is very clear that these professions have not advanced as 
far in liberating themselves from these professional sins, and 
that they are far more a matter of common acceptance in South 
America than in Anglo-Saxon countries. The ease with which 
common phrases are given and accepted in cases where each of 
the parties knows they are not true, is astonishing. 

A higher morality than is held up by Professor Ferreira could 
not be found in any treatment of ethics written by an Anglo-Saxon 
evangelical. We would naturally suppose that the author would 
place emphasis upon what we consider the basis of the highest 
morality — Christianity. Not so ; religion to him is of such minor 
importance that he only gives ten pages of his two hundred to the 
consideration of "systems of morality/' one of which, says the 
professor, is Christianity : 

"Is it my hope, and in general is it desirable, that each one, in 
order to get the best moral results, should adopt a certain moral 
system? I think not. Really all my endeavors in this class, into 
which I have put such devotion, have tended to show that the im- 
portant thing is not to adopt a school of thought but a state of 
spirit. . . . Although it is not necessary to select any moral 

82 



system, we will say frankly, in outline, what we think of the 
principal ones, which are the systems of religion, of metaphysics 
and of positivism. I have already, in other courses of lectures, 
endeavored to describe the good and bad practices of religious 
systems. Here I only wish to insist, and without desire to force 
my attitude on you, but simply to comply most frankly with duty, 
on the following point : We always distinguish the different effect 
of religion on the actions first, on the humble and uneducated, and 
second, on the more cultured classes. With rspect to the com- 
mon argument that religion is a bridle or restraint for the simple 
minded, I only express my contempt. Many people consider 
themselves without the need of religion, but believe the great 
majority need it not to sin — or in order not to be dangerous. This 
is simply the lowest kind of a theory, but it has its counterpart 
in a much more subtle one. Renan, for instance, does not believe 
personally in the divinity of Christ, but says that the belief will 
always persist. This is an aristocracy not to my liking, this divid- 
ing the world in two parts, first myself and a few others who can 
arrive at my elevated plane of thought, and second the world of 
sinners. 

"In regard to the restraining effect of religion on the masses, 
there is probable exaggeration both on the side of those who be- 
lieve that religion restrains people from evil actions and also on 
the side of those who believe that religion tends to keep people in 
degradation and ignorance. Generally what happens to men of 
little education and little morality is that they keep their religion 
in one place and their morality, good or bad, in another place. 

"I will cite an example. When our first child was born, the 
physician obliged me to secure a wet nurse for it and the nurse's 
child was left with another family. One day I heard that the 
nurse's child was very ill. On calling, I found the family that 
was paid to take care of it was absolutely indifferent, had done 
nothing to relieve it and had not even called a doctor. I took the 
baby to my own home and cared for it, but in spite of all that 
could be done the baby died. Then the couple from whose neglect 
the child had died came to my home and created a disgraceful 
scene. Why? Why, because the mother was about to bury the 
baby without baptism! Now I do not believe that these people 
were hypocrites. It was simply their religion had had little moral 
effect, either good or bad. 

"Let us look at the religion of the intellectuals, or the higher 

83 



forms of the positive religions, at least the forms called higher. 
Among the intellectuals who still remain afflicted with positive re- 
ligions there is a much more liberal spirit. "This liberal spirit has 
come to be practically the official attitude in certain religions which 
are reputed to be higher, such as Protestantism, which admits free- 
dom of thought, and the Modernist movement in the Catholic 
Church. 

"Really I feel that, intellectually as well as morally, the forms 
of religion as they are manifested among simple people are less 
harmful than those so-called superior forms. The form in which 
a dogmatic religion may be practically superior is when it consists 
in a simple faith, absolutely simple and without complications, 
intellectual or moral. . . . The adaptations and conciliations 
which men endeavor to make between primitive religions and ad- 
vanced morality and psychology result in producing psychological 
conditions which bring about most evil results. 

"Let me explain. Suppose I open the Bible, which for me is 
a historical and moral monument. In this spirit I can read it and 
feel a deep respect for certain institutions and persons without 
suppressing indignation and repugnance for others. But suppose 
a person as educated as I opens the Bible believing that it is divinely 
inspired. Let us see what happens, intellectually and morally. 

"First, intellectually : Take Genesis or any other part that offers 
explanations of scientific matters and one sees what primitive and 
false ideas are there. What does the educated person do? He 
manufactures sophistries and juggles his reason in order to explain 
that which is unexplainable. While the liberal spirit will not be 
damaged by the ingenious primitive explanations, the one who 
believes in its divinity has to falsify his reason: 'Days are not days, 
but geological epochs ; the light here is not that of the sun, but a 
diffused light; that which detained it was the earth, etc.' The im- 
mediate result of these harmful mental gymnastics is to shake 
the intelligence from its rectitude. 

"But in the moral field is where the result is the worst. I 
open the Bible, for example, at the history of Abraham. Abra- 
ham, on going to a foreign country, ordered Sarah to deny 
that she was his wife and pass as his sister, which resulted 
in the kings' taking Sarah as their concubine and enriching 
Abraham with many 'cattle, asses and camels.' If we read 
this in a liberal spirit it will not do us any more harm than 

84 



the narration of any other immoral act. But suppose a per- 
son reads it who is obliged, because he has previously en- 
closed his spirit in a determined religion, to find good here 
or at least to apologize for the act. What kind of tortures 
will it not be necessary for him to apply to his conscience? 
And when he finds out that the Lord was irritated on finding 
out these things, not at Abraham, but at the Kings because 
they had taken Sarah, and punished them greatly until they 
had returned Sarah, while Abraham was honored continually 
by the Lord? Or when he sees further along that the whole 
prominence of the tribe of Israel was due to the fraud of 
Rebecca in blessing Jacob instead of Isaac, and feels himself 
obliged to believe that this deception, with divine approval, 
is the basis of Israel's predominance, and all the rest as it is 
reported in each chapter? To what point will it be necessary 
for this reader to arrive in order to lose his moral balance? 

"Such is the morality produced by religion in persons who 
have a certain amount of instruction. Such gymnastics can- 
not be performed with impunity. For this reason as great a 
thinker as Guyau has sustained that possibly Protestantism 
is not, as is commonly supposed, a superior educative re- 
ligion to Catholicism ; for there is noted the different attitude 
of the two religions toward the absurd. The Catholic re- 
ligion recommends the swallowing of the absurdity at once 
without tasting it, as children do medicine, this attitude be- 
ing represented by the authoritative phrases of the Church, 
'I believe although it is impossible ; I believe because it is 
absurd.' Since they do not examine this absurdity when swal- 
lowed, at least the rest of the mentality may be left undis- 
turbed. But with the religions of freedom of thought, it is 
necessary to prove that the absurdity is not an absurdity, 
which brings a mental warping that is the most dangerous of 
all things. The same reasoning applies to modernism in the 
Catholic Church. I believe, therefore, that if there is a crude 
religion and a refined one, the crude religionists will have an 
out-of-date mentality and the refined ones will have a dis- 
located mentality; in other words, I believe that when these 
religious spirits are refined they are worse than when crude — 
they give less hope. 

"I have spoken of the bad phases of religions of liberal 
thought'; the facility for division, for finding solutions, ar- 
rangements ; for the moral and intellectual is so much a part 

85 



of them that, if it were sensible to compare races, Latins, Saxons 
and Teutons, and ask which is superior, I believe, contrary to 
certain ideas that are afloat today, that there is a quality which 
would make our race clearly superior to these others, the quality 
of greater resistance which we oppose to those states of the spirit 
which result from intellectual and moral 'arrangements,' those 
psychological divisions, those inconsequents of sentiments and in- 
telligence. 

"The moral life of each one should be then, rather than 
a system, a living state. Unfortunately one has to follow this 
morality without help, for there are no books on ethics which 
explain sincerely what the position of man is and what his 
actions should be. We live on a planet of which we know 
not the origin, on a limited bit of the universe of which we 
know little and of the part beyond which we know nothing. But 
if we must build our houses on the corruptible earth, at least 
let us have windows open toward the heavens. Choose what- 
ever style you prefer, Greek, Roman, Gothic, only one you 
must not choose, that of the pyramids. For if a building is 
closed above it is good for nothing except a tomb. From 
these positive systems, one may see the sky, divine, suppose, 
conceive, dream." 

No one can doubt, as he studies the growingly complex 
life of South America, that her greatest problem is a moral 
one. As Prof. Ferreira and many others have pointed out, 
one branch of the Christian Church has failed to supply an 
adequate basis for morality. Will the Evangelical Church be 
able to do so? This is the greatest question before the leaders 
of that church in South America and their friends in other 
parts of the world who are helping to develop this movement. 

Growing Influence of the Evangelical Movement 
In the capitals of South America it is not difficult to recog- 
nize the very rapidly growing influence of the Evangelical 
Church, or at least of the missionaries. In cities like Rio de 
Janeiro and Montevideo the Evangelical Church itself is now 
counted as an influence both by government officials and the 
community at large. In cities like Lima, only an individual 
missionary or tw r o has come to be recognized. In the latter 
city a missionary of the Free Church of Scotland founded a 
little day school four years ago. He now has more applica- 
tions from the best class of people than he can possibly 

86 



accept in his school. At the same time he has been elected 
a member of the most exclusive literary circle of the city and 
made a full professor in the old exclusive University of San 
Marcos. A missionary of the South American Evangelical 
Union has made a continuous fight for religious liberty and 
had a good deal to do with the passing of the bill for religious 
liberty in 1915, which for the first time gave the Protestants 
the right to have their meetings in ecclesiastical appearing 
buildings and invite people publicly to their services. The 
Evangelical School for Girls counts among its patrons cabinet 
ministers, bankers and other prominent families of Lima. 

As to the work of the Protestants in Peru, Sr. Davalos y 
Lisson says : "For some time there have been certain Prot- 
estant pastors, belonging to the Evangelical Church, who in 
their desire to proselite have spread their teachings among 
the Indians. At first they were legally attacked by the priests 
and public officials, who invoked Article Four of the Consti- 
tution. Congress suspended the part of the article prohibiting 
the exercise of other religions, so that the opposition to the 
evangelicals now has no support in law. Yet there still 
arrive in Lima, from time to time, notices of strange attacks 
on Peruvians and foreigners belonging to the evangelicals, 
attacks generally carried out by ignorant and drunken crowds, 
incited by religious fanatics. The way in which the Protestants 
have intensified their labors in the mountains is notable. 
Their endeavors are interesting from the standpoint of moral 
and civil improvement. They correct the immoral customs 
of the Indians and, most important, they combat alcoholism, 
the most terrible enemy of the native, a vice that has been 
tolerated by the priests in their religious festivities. The 
evangelicals, by means of their words and example, both kind 
and austere, have persuaded the people who visit them to quit 
their drinking." 

It is interesting to note that the work of Protestant mis- 
sions here mentioned is that carried on in the remote high- 
lands by the South American Evangelical Union on their 
Urco Farm and that of the Seventh Day Adventists near 
Puno, on Lake Titicaca. The South American bishop of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church has said that the work of the 
Adventists here is the most remarkable that he has seen in 
South America. They now have seventy schools with an 
average of fifty students each, taught by Indians. A Normal 

87 



School is being built which will prepare more and better 
teachers. The system is so developed that it seems to be 
almost self-propagating. The Urco Farm too is doing a re- 
markable work, both for the spiritual and economic develop- 
ment of the Indians. The corn crop in that district has been re- 
markably improved by the importation of seed during the last 
few years. The government has such confidence in the direc- 
tor of the farm that the funds for road building and other 
public works are placed under his control, and his advice is 
sought on all public questions. 

In Santiago de Chile the two evangelical schools, Santiago 
College and Institute* Ingles, have been recognized for years 
by the community at large as outstanding influences for good. 
Students and professors from the national university have 
mingled w T ith those students and professors in fraternal help- 
fulness. One of the evangelical missionaries has taught 
English for several years in the university and at least one 
of the university professors publicly urges his students to 
read the Bible and attend Christian schools in the United 
States. The missionary forces are recognized by the Chilean 
leaders as the best kind of allies in reform movements such as 
those of temperance and labor. The recently formed Young 
Women's Christian Association has come to be quite a center 
of women students of the univeisity. The three hundred 
members have agreed to carry all the local expenses for the 
coming year, the second of the organization. The Evangel- 
ical bookstore, located in the center of the city, though small, 
is getting recognition in commercial and student circles, and 
is slowly permeating the community with Christian literature. 
Santiago is only equaled by two or three other cities in the 
world in the number of foreign missionaries, there being over 
sixty located there at present. 

The President of Chile, Sr. Arturo Alessandri, recently 
elected on a reform ticket, which the evangelical forces 
backed with enthusiasm, said to representatives of the Evan- 
gelical Union of Santiago, on the occasion of their presenting 
him with a copy of the Scriptures : "I am a Christian. I 
believe in the doctrines of Christ. I accept the sound doc- 
trines of the Bible and reject clerical errors. I raise the white 
flag to all truth. This book of yours which you present will 
remain by my side. It will be my guide and I shall know 
how to appreciate it at its true worth. If Congress confirms 

88 



tny election, when I come into the capital I will work inces- 
santly for complete and absolute liberty of conscience. I 
know of the cultural and moral work that you, the evangelicals, 
are doing- in all the republic, and I hold it in the highest 
esteem. If I enter the nation's capitol the doors will always 
be open to help every good work which you do and you will 
always occupy a place in my heart." 

In an interview I had with the president, he said : "The 
only book I have in my bedroom is the Bible and I read it 
every day. I believe the people of the United States are great, 
not because of their great commerce and energy, but they 
have these things because they are a Bible-reading people. 
We have before us in Chile a great many problems, such as 
the labor and temperance problems, and I desire to solve them 
according to the principles of the Bible. I believe in the 
separation of Church and State, so that the State may pro- 
tect and encourage all forms of Christianity which work for 
the good of the people." 

The city of Buenos Aires has a population of nearly two 
million people and it is difficult to feel the influence of any 
one movement there. Both for that reason and because the 
evangelical forces there have been less progressive, it may 
be explained why their influence is not so much in evidence. 
The Young Men's Christian Association, with 3600 members, 
"however, must be reckoned as a real community influence. 
The Young Women's Christian Association is also making 
itself felt among the women of the city, though their lim- 
itations in building have retarded them greatly. Colegio Amer- 
icano, supported jointly by the Methodists and Disciples of 
Christ, is gradually becoming recognized in educational circles. 
The so-called "Morris Schools," the soul of which is an Anglican 
clergyman of that name, have attracted the widest attention of any 
^evangelical work and have even been granted subsidies by the Na- 
tional Congress, after the liveliest debates on religious liberty. The 
Salvation Army is also recognized officially and generally as a 
philanthropic agency and the new business block they are planning 
to erect in the center of the city will represent the contributions 
of many citizens of Buenos Aires. The Secretary of the World's 
Sunday School Association, living in Buenos Aires, was not long 
ago invited to write a series of comments on scripture texts, which 
were published in a weekly paper. The university students are 
joining heartily in the campaign of the Young Men's Christian 

89 



Association to raise funds for the needy students of Europe. So- 
far as the writer knows, however, up to the present, no missionary 
or regular mission work in Buenos Aires has secured such influence 
in the community as may be noted in some other South American 
capitals. 

In Montevideo there is so liberal an atmosphere that the fact 
that one is a Protestant does not at all mark him off from the 
general community. The present rector of the University used to 
be a teacher in the Methodist Sunday School and was educated in 
the Waldensian Colony. During his administration of the office 
of Minister of Foreign Relations he discovered the shortage in 
accounts of one of the consuls in a foreign country. When he 
began to prosecute the man, the president requested him to desist 
since the consul had rendered political favors to his chief. The 
minister resigned as a protest. His successor in office told him 
that he could never understand why a man would sacrifice a bril- 
liant career because of a delicate moral point. But when he visited 
the Waldensian Colony and saw the emphasis placed on honor, 
he then could understand. This Waldensian Colony, founded more 
than half a century ago by several thousand Waldensians, has 
exercised a marked influence on the life of Uruguay. Many of 
their young people have gone through the professional schools 
of Montevideo and are now leading physicians, lawyers, engineers 
and merchants. The Methodist Church in Montevideo probably 
has the highest average of intelligence as well as the finest church 
building of any congregation in Spanish-speaking Protestantism. 
One of its members is a justice of the Supreme Court and another 
has been a professor in the University for many years. The Edu- 
cational Secretary of the Committee on Co-operation, who makes 
his headquarters in Montevideo, is recognized by the intellectual 
circles in their temperance and other organizations for reform. 
The Methodist Woman's Board is now erecting what promises to- 
be the finest building for a girls' boarding school in South Amer- 
ica. Here also is to be located the International Faculty of 
Theology and Social Sciences, which is to give post-graduate 
training to Evangelical leaders of all South America. 

Rio de Janiero is probably the largest evangelical center in the 
Latin world, though I am not sure as to its comparative strength 
with the evangelical movement in Paris. There are about one 
hundred preaching points in the city and suburbs. The Pastor's 
Association has some sixty members. Protestantism here glories 

90 



in a great history since the first service of the evangelicals, which 
was really the first foreign mission ever sent out by Protestantism, 
was held by the Huguenots in that city in 1554. The oldest Prot- 
estant Church in South America, built by the English colony in 
1910, still renders service to the same colony. The central congre- 
gations of the Brazilian Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist and Con- 
gregational Churches have large and influential memberships. The 
First Presbyterian Church has a thousand members and a thou- 
sand in Sunday School, with social rooms, a printing press, and 
pastor's residence ; it supports several missionary workers in Brazil 
and one in Portugal, conducting some fourteen branch Sunday 
Schools in the city of Rio de Janeiro. It counts among its mem- 
bers congressmen, physicians, bankers, merchants and literary 
men as well as those of the humbler classes. A member of the 
Congregational Church who died recently had an estimated capital 
of one million dollars in his business and was the patron of a num- 
ber of city charities. The governor of the State of Espiritu Santo, 
Brazil, is a devout member of the Methodist Church. Visiting 
ministers at the State capitol are often asked into his private 
office to read the Bible and pray with him. When he was living 
in Rio de Janeiro representing his state in the Senate, his church 
put on a campaign for tithing. After a sermon by his pastor, he 
came to him with the word that he had decided to give a tenth 
of his income, and as a beginning for that year, he put into his 
pastor's hands a check, equal to several thousand dollars. 

The daily papers of Rio de Janeiro publish articles both from 
the ^ens of evangelical writers and from their own staff describ- 
ing evangelical work. The Evangelical Hospital was built entire- 
ly by the churches of Brazil at a cost of one hundred thousand 
dollars, and is sustained by them. The Young Men's Christian 
Association raised in a recent building campaign, led by the fore- 
most citizens of the city, Sr. Ruy Barbosa being chairman, more 
than a hundred thousand dollars. The Young Women's Christian 
Association in a year after its opening has twelve hundred mem- 
bers, among them some of the most distinguishedwomenof the city. 
The Secretary for Literature of the Committee on Cooperation is 
a member of the most important literary clubs of the city and the 
series of readers, prepared by him, has just been adopted by the 
public schools of the state of Sao Paulo. An evangelical pastor 
of Sao Paulo has written what is generally recognized as the best 
grammar of the Portuguese language. The General Agent of the 

91 



American Bible Society is recognized both by Brazilians and 
foreigners as one of the leading citizens of Rio de Janeiro. It 
was he who first suggested to the government that it follow the 
method used in Cuba to clean up Rio de Janeiro, a suggestion 
which led to the transformation of the city from one of the worst 
pest holes in America, to one of the most healthful and certainly 
the most beautiful city in the world. His was the honor also to 
begin the playground movement and other civic betterments. In 
the recent epidemic of influenza, this good man offered himself and 
the "People's Institute," which he directed, to a committee of 
citizens on which were working the principal Catholic clergy of 
the city. From a meeting at the Cathedral, a priest was sent with 
him to visit the Parish Church, near the People's Institute. With 
such an introduction the parish priest agreed to allow the evan- 
gelical minister to take entire responsibility for ministering to* 
more than half of the parish, , This minister saw the error in 
the way relief was being administered, the sick people themselves 
coming together at relief stations and standing in the sun for hours, 
not only making the sick worse, but spreading the disease. So 
he told the committee that he could not follow their plan, but 
would make a systematic canvass of the houses, find out what was 
needed and deliver it to the sick. They saw the point at once 
and the system of relief in the whole city was changed to the one 
used by the People's Institute. This contributed greatly to the 
good name of the Evangelical Church, for not only in the capital 
but in all Brazil, were the Evangelicals first and most practical 
in their relief in this, one of the greatest epidemics in the history 
of the republic. 

One of the most remarkable examples of evangelical influence 
on a member of the intellectual class in Latin America is found 
in the case of Dr. Jose Carlos Rodriguez, who has just produced 
a study on the Old Testament that is no doubt the greatest work 
of its kind ever written in the Portuguese or Spanish language. 
Dr. Rodriguez was for many years the editor and proprietor 
of the largest daily in Rio de Janeiro, The Journal of Commerce. 
As such and because of his singular uprightness of character and 
his understanding of international questions, he was often called 
on by his government to serve on many important international 
commissions. As a young man he got hold of a Bible on his first 
trip to the United States and ever since has been a student of 
the Book. Several years ago, he began a series of articles in his 

92 



paper on Bible Study. He then became so interested in the subject 
that he decided to sell his paper and give the rest of his life to 
writing on the subject. His first book has just been published 
in two large and handsome volumes of more than a thousand 
pages, and is called "Estudo Historico o Critico sobre o Velho 
Testamento." It represents eleven years of investigation, the last 
five of which were given entirely to the writing of this work and 
seeing it through the press in Edinburgh. 

Lest the writer of these lines be thought to overstate the far- 
reaching importance of this book, which seems to him to mark 
the entering of South America into a new epoch of spiritual devel- 
opment, let the words of a distinguished South American be cited. 
The well-know Brazilian literary critic, Dr. Joao Ribeiro, in one 
of the best known daily papers of Rio de Janeiro, reviewing Dr. 
Rodriguez' book says : "Generally there is no love for religious 
literature in Brazil. Roman Catholicism does not favor criticism 
or permit liberalism in ideas or opinions, which she considers 
dangerous. To this is due the sterility of our ideas on religion, 
which do not reach beyond eloquent sermons such asthose of Vieira 
or Mont Alverne in which there are found most beautiful literary 
forms. It is easy to attribute the indifference of our intellectuals 
toward Roman Catholicism in Brazil to this dogmatic narrowness 
which predominates in all Latin countries. The door of reaction 
shuts out liberal thought. The faithful become accustomed to 
this prejudicial attitude which soon degenerates into a profound 
indifference. 

"This book of Dr. Rodriguez makes us think of new roads that 
may be opened as an outlet for the religious stagnation. It is 
not a book of propaganda, but it is a worthy effort and God grant 
that it may bring results. Books of this kind are what the Latin 
people need. On reading Dr. Rodriguez' book we have been im- 
pressed with the idea that it is the only book in all our language that 
takes into account modern science in the discussion of religion. 
It does not, however, follow the extreme of the Germans' ration- 
alism. On the contrary, it is a book of profound religious faith, 
which loves discussion and historical criticism, in which proof of 
the truth is found. 

"This tendency constitutes the greatest difficulty for a criticism 
which is emancipated from preconceived religious ideas. As Prof. 
Loehr says : 'Scientific study should be separated from the Church's 
dogmatic point of view, which insists that the Old Testament is 

93 



a preparation for the New and that the religion of the Hebrews 
is the guidance of the Spirit toward the perfection in Christ.' But 
the book under review takes exactly the opposite view from that 
of Loehr. For Dr. Rodriguez the whole of Jewish history is a 
constant, clear and progressive revelation of the great Christian 
fact. 'Jesus Christ is the secular projection of the Divine Activity 
in the history of the chosen people,' are the author's exact words. 

"We find this doctrine somewhat exclusive. For other authors 
all peoples that antedated Christ, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks and 
even Romans, were collaborators in developing Christianity. Jesus 
did not know these peoples, most probably, nor was that necessary, 
since His work was purely and profoundly moral. He did not need 
scientific information. But the Christianity which springs from 
Him received much from its contact with these peoples, as is seen 
in Saint Paul, the author of Christian theology, and in the Fourth 
Gospel, which is mistakenly attributed to the Apostle John. . . . 

"It only remains to say of this book of deep and vast erudition 
that whatever may be the religious sentiments of those who read 
it, they will find here a proof of the intellectual capacity of our 
race to confront the most difficult and the most profound problems 
of humanity. In our Portuguese or Brazilian bibliography we 
do not have one single book which can be put beside this study of 
the Old Testament. We have, possibly, delitantes and lovers 
of religious literature, as is the author of these lines, and 
a few fragments of Tobias Barreto, little read and gener- 
ally depreciated. . . . Irreligious men, in the true sense 
of the word, do not exist. Intolerance or fanaticism is only 
a state of mind which uses 'irreligious' to describe the unfor- 
tunate unbeliever and to curse its adversary. It is well then, 
since men everywhere have their peculiar religious sentiments, 
that all should read this book, admirable in its every treatment 
and eloquent in its beautiful simplicity." 

Summing up my impressions of the evangelical work of South 
America on this last trip, I would say that in spite of the great 
need of enlargement in personnel, equipment and program, the 
Evangelical Movement has come to be an established and recog- 
nized force in South America. The old discussions concerning 
whether or not the simple evangelical church could ever satisfy 
the Latin temperament with its love for display and ceremony or 
the other question as to whether or not Protestant missions to 
South Americans were justified or would ever be welcomed by 

94 



them — these discussions, in the light of actual developments have 
ceased to be questions. In modern parlance, the Evangelical 
Church in South America has "arrived." A certain type of 
publicist, ecclesiastics, politicians and sentimentalists, may go 
on ignoring or opposing this fact. But no real student of the 
social life of the continent, whatever may be his likes or dislikes, 
will fail to recognize this growingly important phenomenon. 

Organizers of the Panama Congress and workers in the Com- 
mittee on Co-operation in Latin America may well take courage 
at the part this movement has had in bringing the evangelical 
work to its present strength. The difference between the impact 
of the evangelical work in the community as seen in visits in 1914 
and in 1921 is nothing less than remarkable. This multiplied in- 
fluence has been brought about by a united study of the task, a 
united program of action, the presentation of a united front be- 
fore the community and a broader, more positive, more compre- 
hensive conception of the service to be rendered. 

Signs of Moral and Spiritual Awakening 
In every one of the countries visited in South America, I 
found a rapid development of all kinds of altruistic movements 
like free night schools, public, milk stations, campaigns for "bet- 
ter babies," anti-tuberculosis organizations, free reading rooms. 
Boy Scouts, newsboys' homes, clubs for working girls, student 
hostels, mutual societies for intellectual improvement and health 
insurance, Saturday half-holiday and any number of other move- 
ments. While these were often fostered by the labor, feminist 
or temperance movements, or by North American missionary 
forces, there are many of them that seem to be entirely inde- 
pendent. These movements show the usual weaknesses of the 
beginnings of such independent developments, without technical 
direction. But they show the remarkable, wide-awake spirit of 
the people and offer great encouragement to those interested in 
the moral and spiritual development of South America. A book 
could easily be written outlining these movements. In Santiago 
de Chile there is an office building where nearly a dozen social, 
temperance and educational organizations working for community 
development, have their headquarters. The mere signs on the 
doors are one of the most impressive demonstrations of the way 
these movements are developing. An illustration of the informal 
way in which some of these movements are begun and the extent 

95 



of their outreach is found in a few young men from the Young 
Men's Christian Association in Buenos Aires making up with 
a neighborhood gang of boys by first stopping to watch them 
play, then entering into their play, then telling them stories, then 
teaching them new games, until now they have a regular time 
for games, stories, hikes, etc., and a loyalty to moral ideals of 
the gang that is influencing the whole neighborhood — all without 
any equipment except a vacant lot and an occasional ball or bat. 

Beneath those outward demonstrations of interest in the other 
man it is not difficult to find, if one knows how to get into the 
hearts of the people, a real hunger for spiritual things, and a 
recognition of the necessity of a spiritual basis for national and 
personal life. The change that is coming over some of the intel- 
lectuals of South America concerning religion is illustrated in the 
life of one of the leading educationalists of Argentina, who when 
the Young Men's Christian Association was started in Buenos 
Aires several years ago, pleaded with the secretaries to leave off 
the word Christian in order not to shut out their influence on the 
general community. But recently this same man not only told the 
Association that he recognized his mistake but has declared him- 
self in accord with their Christian principles, and is giving a large 
part of his time to Association work. Men like Dr. Fernandez 
Pefia, president of the National Teachers' Association of Chile; 
Prof. Ernesto Nelson of the popular University of Buenos Aires; 
Prof. Eduardo Monteverde, of the University of Uruguay ; Sr. 
Juan Francisco Perez, Secretary of the Paraguayan Institute; 
Dr. Galvez, of the Peruvian literary circle, and Dr. Jose Carlos 
Rodriguez, the editor emeritus of "O Journal du Comercio," of 
Rio de Janeiro, are leaders in this growing circle of distinguished 
South Americans who believe profoundly in the necessity of the 
spiritual life as the basis of solving all national and personal 
problems. 

Some of the younger generation of intellectuals are also turning 
their thoughts toward religion. I do not mean to organized re- 
ligion, for I found few of them who were interested in either 
Protestantism or Catholicism as movements into which they might 
throw their lives. But there are a number who are now coming 
to pursue the sentimental side of religion, to read the lives of 
saints like Loyola and Francis de Assisi and to be interested in 
the Bible itself. The editor of the oldest daily paper in Peru 
said to me that he got away from his office as early as possible 

96 



every day to go home and have a quiet time with his family and 
to read the Bible. He was anxious to assure me that he was no 
Protestant, but that he did enjoy the Bible. Calling on one of 
the best known of the younger literary men, while he was in the 
act of preparing a public address, I remarked on the open Bible 
'before him. He replied that he was looking for some great words 
of Isaiah, with which to burn a thought into the minds of his 
hearers. This man recently answered the attacks of Dr. Gonzales 
Prada on religion and since then has taken many occasions to 
declare himself in favor of Christianity. Different from his inter- 
est, which is largely social, there are a number of young men who 
are cultivating the spiritual, without any reference to the prac- 
tical, men who have become imbued with ideas something akin 
to the old mystics and to. Buddhism. Some of these have actually 
taken to going to mass, not that they care anything for the Church 
but that it gives them a chance to meditate. One of the highest 
qualities that a thinker can have is "una gran inquictud espiritual." 
There are many young men in South America who read Victor 
Hugo as devotedly before retiring at night as one of us would 
read our Bible. In a conversation with the Director of the National 
Library, who is also Dean of the Faculty of Letters in San 
Marcos University, Peru, he said : "What Peru needs is idealism 
carried out practically. Send us from North America your people 
of ideas and interpreters of the spiritual. We have been great 
admirers of the United States and this has done us harm in a cer- 
tain way. Our people have pointed to the Northern Republic 
as successful because of its practical ability to develop the material. 
And they have said that if Peru will become rich, it too will be- 
come great. We need representatives of your life that will show 
wherein your true greatness lies, which I am convinced is in your 
emphasis on the spiritual." 

Dr. Mariana H. Cornejo, one of the great men of Peru, said 
in an address before the University, July 3, 1915: 

"Gentlemen, for individual wrongs and our social wrongs there 
are only two remedies ; either the intervention of a strong foreign 
power whose help will teach us to invoke religion, or one's own 
vitality whose reaction teaches the calling upon and the regulation 
of science. It seems to me that the University should discuss the 
scientific solution. The first requisite, gentlemen, of a religious 
apostleship means to feel profoundly and to transmit a faith in 

97 



the reality of the divine miracle. The first requisite of a scien- 
tific apostleship is to feel and transmit faith in the efficacy of a 
scientific solution. 

"The greatest vice of our social order is the tenacious resistance 
to every reform, however insignificant it may be. Here we be- 
lieve there is the greatest antagonism between ideas and acts, that 
at least they can be more than two parallel series which can never 
approach one another. International law recognizes neutrality 
in war. We have discovered neutrality in science. In the outside 
world opposite doctrines struggle against one another and are 
applied practically. With us the phenomenon is followed by in- 
terest. But it never occurs to us that it might be implanted within 
our circle. The reason always given is known to every one, 'We 
are not prepared.' As if either in the physical or in social evolu- 
tion, there were ever a preparation different from the need itself " 

If Dr. Cornejo is not willing to do more than point out religion 
as one of the ways out of national impotency, there are others who 
are willing to come forth clearly for religion as the one way out 
of the present continent-wide social and moral confusion. 

While Miguel de Unamuno is not a South American, he prob- 
ably has a wider spiritual following than any man on that con- 
tinent, so the following from him is significant. He first quotes 
the following from a young Peruvian writer : "What we Spanish 
Americans need, in order to give birth to a fruitful collective 
ideal, is ethnic homogeneity, confidence in our own powers, and 
intense and concentrated intellectual life, and social and economic 
development." Then Unamuno adds : "And they need something 
else, the same thing that we Spaniards need in order that we may 
once again have an idea that will give originality, they need re- 
ligious sentiment in life ; for the religion that they inherited from 
their fathers and ours is now for them as it is for us, a purely 
conventional life." 

About two years ago the Argentine sociologist, Alfredo Palacios, 
addressing a large meeting of students and professors in the Uni- 
versity of Lima, had a Bible on the table before him from which 
he read profuse quotations, chiefly to point out the value of Mosaic 
and prophetic teaching for the solution of modern social prob- 
lems. A few weeks ago Antonio Caso, one of the most noted 
figures in the intellectual life of Mexico, gave an address before 
a similar audience, and his theme was, "Individuality, Personal- 

98 



ity, and Divinity." In this address he identified the highest type 
of personality with the ability to think reality under a single con- 
cept, and at the same time the disposition to make free sacrifice 
of all one possessed. He told his audience that a supreme per- 
sonality of that type could be found in the Gospels. Caso is a 
theist and denominates himself a Christian thinker. It was he 
who was the chief instrument in demolishing positivism in Mexico. 
That Spanish America should possess a philosophical thinker of 
the calibre of Caso, who calls himself a Christian without being 
specifically a Catholic, augurs the possibility of the same new dawn 
breaking over these republics that the presence of Unamuno augurs 
for the Iberian peninsula. 

One curious thing I have noticed is that some thoughtful men 
who do not mind calling themselves religious, mystical or even 
Christian, have a horror of being called "sectarian," and unfor- 
tunately everything that savors of a definite religious creed or 
organization is for them "sectarian." One of the reasons for not 
wishing to be "sectarian" is that for them it is equivalent to a static, 
illiberal and intolerant condition, through the annuling of all 
.spiritual restlessness and growth. The compatability between a 
definite creed and progressive spiritual life and thought seems not 
to have dawned upon them. 

Many of the young men who have been to school in the United 
States are returning home with reports of the place religion has 
in the life of those countries and are thus calling their fellow 
countrymen's attention to the question. The philosophical drift 
now is very evidently toward the spiritual theories of Bergson and 
William James and away from the materialism of Spencer, who 
has held the place of prime importance for many years. 

The atmosphere has changed enough so that in lectures before 
intellectual circles and in personal interviews on this trip, I felt 
I could gO further than on other similar occasions in discussing 
spiritual questions. In a lecture on Inter- American Friendship 
before the University of Chile, one of the few sentiments applauded 
by the dignified audience was that concerning the good that could 
be done in bettering mutual understandings by the right kind of 
spiritual ambassadors who would discuss frankly and sympa- 
thetically the great fundamental religious questions which lie at 
the base of both North and South American life. 

There is some trace of a reviving interest in Roman Catholicism 
by the formation of Catholic Student Clubs in the University of 

99 



Buenos Aires and by the writings of such authors as Dr. Juan 
Zorilla de San Martin and Francisco Garcia Calderon. The 
latter insists, in his last book "Ideologia," that there is a great 
work for the Church, if it will only reform its ways, saying : "If 
the school teaches nationalism, the Church should emphasize high 
moral ideals, the devotion to duty, the seriousness of life, the 
significant inquietude of death." An interesting phenomenon in 
Catholic circles is the case of those who call themselves Catholics 
but not Christians. Strange enough the word "Christian" has 
often in South America, as in Spain, had a repugnant connota- 
tion. 

I have already referred to the devotion of Dr. Zorilla de San 
Martin to Roman Catholicism and his belief in the spiritual. He 
thinks that it is the common spiritual forces of the Northern and 
Southern Americans that will unite us for world service. In my 
recent visit with him he recalled the time in 1896 when he was 
ambassador to France and William II was just beginning to reign. 
The young Emperor then composed a poem, "A Song to Agir" 
(the Norse God of War) which showed to Dr. Zorilla that the 
young man was bent on war. Remembering this poem all during 
the years, this Uruguayan writer recently took it for the title of 
a book which he has been working on for some three years. This 
book deals with the world situation, growing out of the war, and 
the problem of how the spiritual may be made most prominent 
in human relations. He has now decided to change the title of 
his book and call it "The Prophecy of Ezequiel," referring to the 
vision on the Valley of Dry Bones, and the fact that they could 
only be given life by the Spirit blowing upon them. He says that 
it is all right to talk of commerce and agriculture and leagues of 
nations, but the world can never become what it should until it 
has been dominated by the spirit. He believes that in America 
we have not inherited the heathen ideas of the gods of the 
Norsemen that Germany has; that English civilization is a con- 
tinuation of the Roman, rather than the Saxon, that therefore our 
American civilization, both North and South, is more truly dom- 
inated by the heart and the warm sympathy for all people, than 
by the cold sentiments of the Norsemen ; and that, for that reason, 
all Americans can and must stand together in seeing that spiritual 
values are those that dominate mankind. His forthcoming book 
will no doubt be a great contribution to American life in the largest 
sense of the term. The spirit of the man can be seen in the fol- 

100 



lowing quotations from the translation of an address he gave to 
the North American sailor boys visiting Uruguay during the 
war: 

"If the fraternity of our countries comes from the common 
mother, Democracy, this of which I now speak, this which in- 
spires in me such warmth of affection and interest in each and 
every one of you, this comes from something higher and more 
enduring, our common universal Father, our Father which is in 
Heaven, and who is one with the Son whom we all worship, Jesus 
Christ the Divine Redeemer of men. I wish to speak to you of 
Him on this occasion, my friends and brothers, because I wish 
to leave in your souls as the most precious remembrance of my 
country, living and eternal words. 

"When on the starlit nights in the midst of the infinite ocean, 
you pass the slow hours of the night watch at the foot of your 
formidable cannon, more than once you will lift your eyes to the 
firmament above, and more than once you will feel pass among 
the constellations the memories of the absent country for whose 
glory you struggle, and they will fill your hearts with peace, with 
energy, with valor ; you will see there the images of those who 
love you most in all the world and whom you have left in your 
native land, the image perchance of your mothers who in those 
very moments will be lifting their Christian prayers to Heaven 
for you that God may keep you in His care, and that in your 
journeyings over the far away seas and lands He may give you 
friends who may have toward you something of the paternal 
affection, who may see in you not only the strong arms of war- 
riors, but noble and Christian spirits, and who may speak to you 
now and again of God. of Jesus Christ the Redeemer, of purity, 
of confidence in the Heavenly Father, of the fulfilment of your 
duties toward the good God, toward your fellowmen and toward 
yourselves. 

" It is well to remember, my friends, that among the many who 
show you attentions in a more or less collective and superficial 
fashion, there remain in Uruguay those who have loved you indi- 
vidually and who will follow you with affection after you have 
abandoned our hospitable harbor; remember, young and valiant 
sailors of the democratic fleet, that some there are who, on re- 
membering this group of fair and youthful heads uniformed in 
-white, will lift their spirits to the Father which is in Heaven, and 

101 



will pray that on every one may come His omnipotent protection. 
His illuminating inspirations, His Fortitude and His Peace; they 
will ask that He guard you all from the moral and material dangers 
that rise to meet you, and that He return you well and safe to 
your beloved homeland — better even and stronger than when you 
set out from her shores. 

"And thus it will be, my friends, because the way you take is 
the way of virtue and heroism. That Star Spangled Banner of 
your country, under whose shadow you sail the seas, is a sacred 
thing, as you well know; in her folds there floats the very Spirit 
of God, the God that inspired your virtuous Washington and to 
whom the framers of your Constitution raised their devout invo- 
cation; that banner will inspire you always with sentiments of 
valor and heroism, and it will lead you." 

These words, spoken by a leading Catholic in a Young Men's 
Christian Association, and translated to North American sailors 
by an evangelical missionary, signify the dawning of a new day 
in South America. 

There was a most significant service held April 5, 1921, in 
Buenos Aires, by professors and students, to commemorate the 
first anniversary of the death of the student Viera, who was slain 
by striking students at the University of La Plata, when he went 
to his examinations. There was erected a tablet which reads as 
follows : 

"Here rest the remains of David Francis Viera, who in eighteen 
short years wrote on bronze the attributes of his personality 
foreign to his surroundings, influenced by mediocre and irre- 
sponsible people, to whose violence he opposed a model of filial 
piety, worship of discipline, of the religion of duty unto the utter- 
most, crowning it with pardon of his assassins and dying in the 
friendship of God, as he called for the unity of all his right-minded 
fellow students." 

Dr. Tomas D. Caceres, speaking at the ceremony, said : 
"We must confess on this solemn occasion that the University 
Reform (the movement which has given the students the right to 
participate in the management of the University), withh few excep 
tions has been a source of anarchy, because the forces incorporated 
in the new arrangement are forces without feeling or reason. But 
the student body will never use this force legitimately until it is 

102 



made sensible and reasonable. And this will not be done without 
beginning with one's own interior spirit. 

"And what is the law of spiritual reform needed? Unfor- 
tunately this is not a day of moral unity. Each one will therefore 
respond according to his own ideal. As for myself, I frankly 
declare, repeating a well-formed idea: In the University the 
Gospels should be taught and practised, for in them is found sal- 
vation for this situation as for every situation ; in the Gospel and 
only in it is found complete justice." 

It would be easy to make too much of the significance of such 
statements as these; but there is no question that intellectual 
classes of South America are possessed today of a new open- 
mindedness toward things spiritual. 

Power of Personality 

It would be interesting to continue to draw from one's note 
£ook items that bear on this great problem of the religious struggles 
of the youngest and most promising of the continents. Such a pro- 
cedure would probably add little to the outstanding facts, which, 
as the author sees them, are these: Religion, is considered by a 
large number of the intellectuals of South America to be organ- 
ized evil and when one asks them to accept it he is understood to 
be asking them to work against progress. The Roman Catholic 
Church is thoroughly aroused to this opposition to its organization 
and is making far-reaching efforts to overcome it and to check- 
mate the growing reform movements among laboring men, stu- 
dents and women. The fight between the Church and these ever 
multiplying movements for social betterment is a most strenuous 
contest around which other battles will continue to wage for a 
period of years. The importance of pure morals has heretofore 
been little recognized in South America and the connection be- 
tween morality and religion has seldom been made ; there is now, 
however, a growing interest in ethical questions, which gives 
hope and invites help. The Evangelical churches and the foreign 
missionaries, while still occupying a very limited circle in the life 
of the continent, have now come to the point where their influ- 
ence is publicly felt and acknowledged to be rapidly increasing. 
By probing under the surface there is found a movement toward 
spiritual life, yet it is almost entirely extra-ecclesiastical, confined 
to a chosen few of the intellectual class. 

Facing such a situation, the North American neighbor, who be- 

103 



lieves in the reality and power of the Christian religion and de- 
sires with all sincerity to help his Southern friends, will inquire 
how it can be done. 

The first and most obvious answer is — enlarge the present mis- 
sion work. There can be.no doubt that this work has had far-reach- 
ing results. To it may be traced many of the social movements 
which are now stirring the land. Little chapels in dark and danger- 
ous streets ; quiet meetings in private homes of individual 
""believers" ; small schools, very lacking, from the standpoint of 
modern pedagogy, in equipment and teaching force; persistent 
colporteurs tramping over mountain and plain to distribute the 
word of God — these as well as the more pretentious evangelistic 
and educational activities which command wide attention from the 
public are worthy of duplicating a thousand fold. To the pioneers- 
who have struggled along without equipment, in the midst of 
fanatical opposition, often with little support from home or the 
field, is due full recognition. No one who has studied the results 
of their work could fail to have the deepest appreciation for it. 
The section of this treatise which refers to the present strong influ- 
ence of evangelical missions points out, not only the splendid re- 
sults obtained by them in the past, but also the need of continuing" 
and multiplying the forces and methods used in the past. 

Yet everywhere one finds a holy discontent among the mission- 
aries, and a belief that new methods are necessary. Some are 
even ready to declare that the need is for a new conception of the 
missionary task. How this should effect any particular situation 
must be determined by the individual missionary in view of his 
environment and of his aptitudes. One thing, however, seems 
sure and that is that the basis must be personality. Organization: 
to the Saxon, seems indispensable. "Wherever two or three Amer- 
icans are found together, there will they meet and organize."" 
But two or three Latins, or many times that number, may be 
together for many moons, without ever thinking of organization. 
The strongest characteristic of the Hispanic American is individ- 
ualism. This he has inherited from his American and Iberian- 
Arabic ancestry. His relationships are personal. The strength* 
of any leader, political or otherwise, in Hispanic America, lies 
in his personal relations. Candidates for office do not win by 
strong platforms but by strong friendships. Business is not cap- 
tured by a fine organization, which is able to undersell and to 
hurry up deliveries, but by personal relationships with the buyer. 

104 



Letters of introduction, which have gone out of style with the 
Anglo-Saxon, are still of much value among Latins. An illustra- 
tion of the importance of recognition of this emphasis on indi- 
vidualism is seen in the case of a leading intellectual figure who 
is becoming interested in Protestantism, because he considers that 
Protestant nations have been more progressive than Catholic, 
while his ideals of Pan-Americanism involve logically for him a 
sympathetic attitude towards the religion of the Anglo-Saxon 
Republic of the North. His chief difficulty in Protestantism is a 
sentimental one, derived from a dislike of its historical founder, 
Martin Luther. For this scholar, Luther is "antipatico." He says 
that if a man of the type of Francis de Assisi, or Abraham Lincoln, 
instead of the pugnacious Wittenburg monk, had been the founder 
of Protestantism he would have very much less difficulty in em- 
bracing it. Needless to say he should be given new light on the 
great Reformer's character as well as to have pointed out to him 
that there is more than one type of saintliness needed in the world, 
and that in any case the claims of evangelical Christianity do not 
depend on our estimate of any given individual who professes it, 
but only on the character and teachings of its Founder, and the 
results it has produced in human society. The case, however, 
is interesting as affording an insight into South American psy- 
chology. Here it is personality rather than principle that is primarily 
attractive and for that reason the success of Christianity in this 
continent is intimately bound up with the intrinsic attractiveness 
of the personalities through whom it is mediated. I am more 
and more convinced that what will ultimately win this continent 
will not be naked principle or elaborate organization but living, 
breathing, beaming personalities who will bring people into im- 
mediate contact with the living radiant Lord. Instead of wasting 
a great deal of initial time in controversial disquisitions about the 
claims of Protestantism, the Divine-Human Figure of Jesus 
Christ should be presented in all its effulgence ; the message should 
be above all things Cristocentric — Christ as the Satisfier of the 
heart's longings; Christ as the Saviour of the individual and 
societv : Christ as the fulness and goal of manhood. Here, where 
bolld "Caudillos" have never lacked a following, and men have 
chmp- to them through evil report and good report, without con- 
sidering too closely the cause they represented, the words of the 
Master have a verv special significance: "And I if I be lifted up 
from the earth will draw all men unto Me." 

105 



In spite of this well recognized individualism of the Latin Amer- 
ican, however, the Anglo-Saxon missionary in southern countries 
generally follows his characteristic bent. His first step on taking 
up his residence in a Latin American community is very likely to 
be the setting up of a foreign organization. He thereby slaps the 
community in the face, and makes it just as difficult as possible 
for anyone with the least standing in the community to approve 
and accept what the missionary has to offer. Just because the 
missionary is a foreigner he is on trial in the community. But 
the organization he sets up makes the matter worse. Organiza- 
tions are often regarded as only means of forcing methods and 
ideas upon the unwary and unwilling. But again the organiza- 
tion makes unusual demands. The missionary sings hymns and 
wants his friends to sing. Anyone who knows the educated man 
of Latin America, with his dignity and reserve, will see how 
utterly foreign it seems to him to join in singing with a congre- 
gation. There are other aspects of this organization quite foreign 
to Latin American taste. Yet, as he sees the situation, the only 
way provided for hearing the new truth is to join the organiza- 
tion. The friendship of the missionary is reserved often for those 
who have joined or seem likely to join the organized group of 
which he is the leader. In fact his keen Anglo-Saxon conscience, 
trained for centuries to emphasize organization, would forbid 
his spending very much time in cultivating friendships without 
urging his friends to join his organization, which, be it remem- 
bered, long after it is seen to be good, is still felt to be foreign. 
If the organization is sheltered in a poorly furnished hall on a 
side street, as is often the case, and if the service is conducted 
in the broken language of a foreigner, or the uncultured tongue 
of an uneducated national, the difficulties increase. Is it any 
wonder that often people who are attracted to the Evangelical 
Church are the kind who have nothing to lose in social prestige 
and no cultural prejudices to overcome ? The humble classes need 
the gospel ministry. One of the greatest contributions made by 
Evangelical Christianity toward the development of Latin Amer- 
ican nations is the raising of the "pconcs" and "rotos" from surf- 
dom into a thinking, efficient middle class. But evangelical Chris- 
tianity has a message also for the higher classes who now and for 
a long time to come will furnish the leadership of these nations. 
It is everywhere recognized that the method for effectively bring- 
ing the gospel to the higher classes of Latin America has not 

106 



been found. When it is found, it will pretty surely center around 
personality. 

This does not mean that to win Latin Americans as loyal 
disciples of the Lord Jesus organization must be ignored. Latins 
need the invigorating influences of organization. The best organ- 
ized missions are the ones which are getting the best results. The 
magnificent work of the Centenary and the New Era Movements 
in Chile and the Southern Baptist mission of Northern Brazil 
show this clearly. It rather means more emphasis upon methods 
which are distinctively personal, which in the passing of time, 
have greater transforming power, through cultivating friendships, 
eradicating wrong conceptions of life, and planting the leaven 
pf love. It would be a great mistake for the^missionary enter- 
prise to fall into the weakness of individualism. Yet it is equally 
unwise to allow classes or office work, or meetings to prevent 
personal friendships, both with those who are within the mis- 
sionary circle and with those who should be there. There are 
thousands of forward-looking men in South America who are 
anxious for fellowship with people who know the outside world 
as well as the South American world. Time spent with such men 
would redound to the great good of the people whom the mis- 
sionary has gone to serve. Many would never become members 
of the missionaries' organization, but some would, and all would 
contribute to the missionaries' life purpose. 

Several experiments have been tried by which it was hoped 
that missionary work should be carried along with the natural 
currents of custom and not set up unnecessarily difficult barriers. 
These are giving most interesting results. The Scotch Mission 
in Lima, founded in 1917, instead of starting as usual with a small 
preaching service began with a day school which has been built 
up to the standard of a secondary school which fits young men 
for the National University. The whole attention of the mission 
has been so far given to the building up of that school. Is that 
mission doing evangelistic work ? Maybe not according to a rigid 
Anglo-Saxon method of thinking, which defines evangelistic work 
as implying a chapel and regular services. But no one can go 
into the home where these boys are boarded and into the classes 
where they are taught, without realizing what a far-reaching 
evangelistic work is being carried on among them. Who will say 
that after a term of years the intensive spiritual cultivation given 
to those young men will not bear as much or even more fruit for 

107 



Peru than the preaching services held by some other mission in 
a rented hall at certain hours for those who are willing to listen? 
Is it merely our Anglo-Saxon tradition or is it a careful study of 
the methods of Christ and Paul, that brands one course as right, 
and the other as "hedging" ? The Scotch Mission proposes to open 
a place for the public proclamation of the gospel as soon as the 
proper foundations are laid. But I, for one, hope that they will 
so connect such a chapel with their educational work by an- 
nouncing public lectures,* or something of the kind, that it may be 
easy and natural for educated men and women to attend and hear 
the message. Since the director of the school has already been 
recognized, in spite of his well-known religious relationships, as 
an eminent educationalist and has been elected a professor in the 
National University, such a step could be readily taken. 

Another experiment of this sort has been tried in Asuncion, 
Paraguay, where the Disciples of Christ recently opened the 
work. Their first step was to send a missionary to live in Asun- 
cion, to take courses in the University, and to establish relations 
on a friendly basis with the people of the community. These 
contacts were so well established and confidence so truly gained 
that when the missionary was ready to establish a school, he found 
the first people of the community giving blocks of time in help- 
ing him find property, run down titles, organize courses, etc. One 
of the leading lawyers of the city devoted much time to the matter 
of titles. He would have been entitled to a large fee, but refused 
to take any at all, because of his interest in the new enterprise. 
The school and all its foreign teachers are now regarded as a part 
of the community life in Asuncion, contributing in a large and 
unique way to the solution of its problems. The government of 
Paraguay has recently offered to furnish a building in the center 
of the capital city, to enable this recently established mission 
school to establish the first kindergarten in Paraguay. It is to be 
at the same time a training institution for kindergartners. Some 
of the new missionaries on the school's staff are troubled in 
conscience because there is as yet no public preaching of the gospel 
at a chapel. But, a premature organization of Anglo-Saxon 
worship, before they have made their personal friendships through 



* "Paul continued his argument every day from eleven to four in the 
lecture room of Tyrannus. This went on tor two years so that all the In- 
habitants of Asia, Jews as well as Greeks, heard the word of the Lord." 
(Acts 19:10. Moffett's Version.) 

108 



which the way will lead naturally into organization, will, to my 
mind, be going both against Latin American psychology and in 
the face of apostolic method, and will at the same time greatly 
■delay the real progress of the gospel of Christ in Paraguay. 

To bring about a more complete occupation of one of the South 
American fields one mission board recently agreed to turn over 
to another the entire evangelical responsibility for a city which is 
a great student center. The church long established there has not 
been able to reach the city at large. It has developed a group of 
.sincere believers but they are drawn almost wholly from the.un- 
influential classes. The new mission is prepared to put a con- 
siderable force into the task of reaching that city and its constitu- 
encies. Christian strategy would dictate more than the mere 
multiplication of old methods. This force should plan a scheme 
for reaching the intellectual, especially the students who will be- 
come the leaders in all that territory. A new missionary might 
make natural contacts with students and fit himself better for 
Teaching all classes of people by taking courses in the University 
and by inviting little groups to his home. From that might de- 
velop a community service, including the public preaching of the 
gospel, which would reach the whole city. In the meantime the 
relationship of such a missionary to the group of humble Chris- 
tians in the little church can be entirely cordial and helpful, but 
his whole program will not be confined to their circle. In other 
communities where the church has already started but has a 
narrow circle of influence, and where there is a desire to reach 
out into other circles, it might be wise to start an entirely dif- 
ferent movement in another part of the town, letting the two de- 
velop separately. The one always will react favorably on the 
other, if they are both conducted with the spirit of love and service 
that animated Christ in His work. 

. One of the missionaries of greatest influence in Argentina is a 
dentist. His Christian work seems natural to the community, be- 
cause he has built it up along with his dental practice. It has 
come to be as natural to hear him talk in public on religion, as it 
is to hear him talk about it in his office, when he is filling one's 
tooth. The first missionaries to Peru were forbidden by the 
authorities to preach, so they put up a photograph gallery and took 
the people's pictures. For years they had to be contented with 
preaching as they photographed. The present mission house 
in Cuzco has all of its windows made of old photographic plates 

109 



cleansed of the likenesses of the valley's inhabitants. These 
missionaries not only made photographs but took contracts for 
public improvements, selling an iron bridge to the government, 
the placing of which forms one of the choicest stories ever re- 
lated in South America. In this way a standing was gained 
that ultimately allowed the missionaries not only to open a meet- 
ing place, but to exercise a large influence in that capital city. 
When permission had been gained to preach the gospel, they felt 
that they were no longer justified in taking pictures or building 
bridges or doing any form of general community service. What 
was the outcome ? The city soon concluded that they were merely 
trying to establish a foreign religion among them. The services 
were attended by the merest handful of ignorant people. Through 
their hospital and school work, which they are now building up, 
the missionaries are finding a new contact with the community 
life. 

It goes without saying that the people of Latin America should 
be accustomed to listen to preaching. The pulpit has proved its 
worth through the ages and the Latin American churches must 
use it. The question may well be raised, however, whether the 
most effective preaching must follow unchanging ^forms. Must 
a missionary always call his public address a sermon rather than 
a "conferencia" as other public addresses are called; must he 
always take a text and read from the Bible and have congrega- 
tional singing; must the meeting always be closed with prayer, 
no matter how many people are kept away by ecclesiastical forms 
which they regard either as foolish or as compromising? Must 
the Protestant mark be stamped on all that is published, when 
to do so often keeps perfectly good people who are honestly in- 
terested in the truth, from examining such literature? Is it 
cowardly or is it Christ-like to announce that a school is not con- 
ducted to propagate a certain sect but is devoted to building char- 
acter? Is it getting away from the gospel, or getting nearer to it, 
to give the benefits of a night school, a reading room, a clinic, and 
other advantages to the needy, without requiring that they attend 
a Sunday School or lend their influence in building up a church? 
Who started the story that Paul failed at Mars Hill? Did our 
Lord misuse His opportunity in the Sermon on the Mount? It 
was not a sermon at all, as we! understand the word, but rather an 
informal "Platica" about the everyday problems met by people 
in everyday experiences — no marks of nationality, no ceremonies 

110 



designed for peculiar race psychology, but just universal truth, 
left in the hearts of His hearers to bring forth fruit. 

The following, written out' by a thoughtful missionary, after 
our discussion of the question of methods, is worth quoting: 

"There must certainly be organization in Christian work in Spanish 
America, but the organization should not be the primary thing 
especially when initiating an evangelistic movement. A community 
should first be brought into contact, not with a general plan repre- 
sented by some organization or other, but with specific needs, 
specific remedies, and, above all, with specific personalities capable 
of pointing out the former and supplying the latter. The 
missionary should first of all demonstrate in a practical way that 
he can do something of public utility that others cannot do, or at 
least not do so well, in order that people's ears be responsive to 
the deep message he brings. While denying that mere community 
betterment is the end of missionary activity, or that any power 
save the Spirit of God can regenerate a human soul, we are bound 
to affirm that whatever activity undertaken by the missionary in 
the interests of the people among whom he works, or in order 
to give him a claim on their attention is nothing more or less than 
a modern analogy of the wonder-working power that was con- 
ceded to God's servants in those epochs of sacred history when 
Judaism and Christianity had to make good their claim to be from 
God. The claims of Judaism were vindicated against the pagan 
cults of Osiris and Baal by a hecatomb of first-borns and the 
dropping of celestial fire, while the claims of Christianity were 
vindicated against those of Jewish formalism by the acts of One 
pi Whom it was said, 'He was mighty in deed and in word/ 
If the Biblical miracles were essentially signs that pointed to the 
Divinity of the message of those who performed them, Go<fs 
servants of today to whom He gives no wonder-working power 
must find for themselves the means of arresting the interest and 
attention of those they desire to evangelize. When once they have 
established their right to speak, then let them speak and not keep 
silent. 

"Starting from the principle that a missionary has to establish 
,his right to be heard, I believe that the time is ripe for evangel- 
isation on a higher plane than has yet been attempted. It is clear 
to me that the time is ripe for a spiritual apostleship. Men especial- 
ly gifted and prepared, who can show themselves conversant with 

111. 



and sympathetic towards, the new currents of thought, will re- 
ceive an attentive hearing wherever they go, and by the most 
serious minds. The South American likes the 'confer encia and 
will listen seriously to any man who not only knows what other 
people are thinking, but who himself has something definite to 
say. Such a man's message must be essential Cristocentric, so that 
when the golden cloud of his eloquence has faded away, his audi- 
ence will, like the disciples on the Holy Mount, see none but 
'Jesus only.' Such an apostleship could be carried on without 
the evangelist himself being associated with any definite organ- 
ization, or being immediately interested in any work of organ- 
izing. It will be his to show that Christ is worth being interested 
in for His own sake and humanity's and not simply for the sake 
of relating oneself to this or that phase of historical Christianity. 
As the experience of the new convert grows and deepens he will 
feel his need for association with other kindred spirits and for 
organizing himself and them into a group for worship, and the 
propagation of the Faith that saved him. We can trust, I think, 
the living Spirit of God to determine the exact form of eccle- 
siastical organization that will be best for Spanish-American 
converts when God visits the continent 'with power from on 
high.' In other words let us at the present critical moment make 
more of Christ and less of denominationalism." 

"We are ten thousand miles away from these people," said an- 
other worker recently when we were discussing the problem of 
evangelism. That remark will stay with me as long as another 
of the same sort, made by a very conservative missionary on an 
earlier trip to South America : "We might as well expect to convert 
these people to Mohammedanism as to the program which we 
Protestants are now presenting to them." Yet this program can 
be both popular and definitely religious. There is no reason for 
"soft-pedaling" on religion in a school or social center, at a hos- 
pital or in a public te confer eiiciaf.' South Americans are much 
more accustomed to talk on religious topics than are North Amer- 
icans. I have been before many a gathering where there was much 
hostility to one or both forms of organized Christianity, but never 
have found opposition to a frank and tactful declaration that I 
believed in God and was convinced that direct and intimate con- 
tact with Him was necessary for a man's or a nation's highest 
development. Along these lines one may present his profoundest 
convictions, and his audiences will continue to grow in interest and 

112 



in culture. Many will never, as far as one can tell, do more than 
listen. (Though if one should later overhear their remaks to a 
friend at the club or on the plaza, he might be greatly surprised 
at their commendations.) Some will come privately, as did Nico- 
demus to ask about one's own religious life. Then comes the 
opportunity to explain a belief in the organization to which you 
belong and what it offers in' comradeship in the worship of God 
and the service of men. Most of these will go away sorrowing 
and do nothing more than speak a good word for your cause, 
when some Sanhedrin is trying to condemn you to ecclesiastical 
death. But there will also be those like "Dionysios, the Areopagite, 
a woman called Damaris. and some others." 

Excellent results will be achieved in any hospital, community 
center, school or social program where people are invited to come 
for the service itself, which is rendered as a part of character 
building. Enemies of the Evangelical Church represent it as a 
foreign organization come to "propagate" a religion the purpose 
of which is to destroy the older religion and customs of the people 
and win their allegiance to foreign ideas. And many mission- 
aries, afraid that they will not be "true to their colors" allow them- 
selves to be driven into that false position. It is false to say that 
missionaries are in South America to work against Roman 
Catholicism and the national aspirations of the people. If that 
is what opponents mean by propaganda, then they are not sent out 
for that purpose. The missionary goes to South America to help 
the people to live better, purer lives, more useful to their day and 
generation. He believes that to live such a life one needs to recog- 
nize God and obey His word. This is the missionary's message. 
When it comes to organization, he believes there are different ones, 
all with good points. He belongs to one of these, for he believes 
that through it he gets most help in worshipping God and serving 
men. He does not claim perfection for this organization, since it 
is made up of imperfect people. But he loves it and believes he 
will be rendering a wonderful service to another by introducing- 
him to that organization. I have yet to find a Latin American who 
is not interested in a position of that kind, although he may not 
always adopt it. 

Even among missionaries there are differences of opinion as to- 
whether one should always urge people to join an evangelical 
church or whether at times it is well to advise them to remain 
in the Catholic Church and to become the best kind of a Christian 

113 



there. Of course most missionaries feel an obligation to give the 
advice, if not to exert real pressure, to join the evangelical ranks. 
Not a few, however, are coming to believe that it is eminently worth 
while to bring people to a realization of their personal relations 
and responsibilities to God, and to leave them to make their own 
decisions concerning the church through which they will show 
their loyalty. 

Latin America hungers for the message of Christ. It does not 
like the purely Anglo-Saxon method of presenting that message, 
nor does it care for an emphasis on dogma. Said a very fine 
Chilean gentleman recently, when explaining his unwillingness to 
join a Protestant church, "I will do anything for Christ, but noth- 
ing for controversy." With only a preaching program evangelical 
forces may be in cities like Buenos Aires, Havana, Lima and 
Santiago the whole twentieth century and still the people will be 
largely ignorant of their presence or indifferent, to it. 

Latin America needs a religion which will help each individual 
to solve his problems. A professor in the Normal School in Peru 
said : "The kind of religion we would accept would be one that 
emphasized beauty, love and service — one that takes you away 
from fear. I left the Catholic Church because they were always 
talking about the 'inftemo/ May be it will be as horrible as they 
say, but I propose to have at least a little respite from it. We want 
something encouraging, not an everlasting threat; Teach us a 
religion that exalts life and service and we will accept it." There 
is needed likewise a religion that will help to solve the problems 
of each nation. In discussing with a thoughtful Chilean the ques- 
tion of a probable uprising of the common people of that country 
against the privileged classes, he said that the only hope he saw 
of preventing it, was the starting by the Protestant Churches of 
.a movement of sufficient strength to bring about the necessary 
reforms through education. Enlightenment and unselfishness is 
the only hope for the solution of the industrial, economic, moral, 
social and political problems that multiply so rapidly in these 
countries. With the mistakes of Anglo-Saxon countries as a 
guide, the new industrialism might prevent the exploitation of 
women and children or the clashing of labor and capital; and to 
encourage the development of proper philanthropic organizations, 
of eleemosynary institutions, of recreative facilities for the young 
and of an educational system that will put morality first. But 

114 



Protestantism at present is far from meeting these needs, or even 
planning for it. 

It would seem that evangelical missionaries in Latin America 
have three distinctive services to render. One is the building up 
■of an evangelical church which shall furnish a spiritual home 
and a working organization through which its membership shall 
do its part in serving God and humanity. Another is the cleansing 
of the Roman Catholic Church from the error and superstition 
which clogs its Christian service. The third is the uplift of whole 
communities to where everyone has a chance to be physically, 
morally and spiritually at his best. Which of these services is 
most important, who can say? They are more or less interlocked 
in development. 

No one knows what will be the final form of religion in South 
America. Some Protestant missionaries look forward to the time 
when the continent will become evangelical in its religious organ- 
ization. Others expect that a majority will always be Roman 
Catholic, but that they will follow a transformed Catholicism. 
Whether both shall grow toward the perfect unity for which 
Christ prayed, until their peculiarities are merged in a perfect 
Church that will cause the world to believe that "Thou hast sent 
Me" — this is not given for this generation to know. But prac- 
tically, anyone who is contributing to the accomplishment of any 
of these three services may feel that he is working to bring about 
the Kingdom of God on earth. Workers, like members of the 
body, will do the particular service for which they are best pre- 
pared. But let the mouth that speaks say not to the hand that 
ministers or writes, or to the foot that carries the humble col- 
porteur over the mountains, "because thou are not the mouth, 
thou art not the body." And just as important is it that these 
members say not to the mouth, "because thou art not a minister- 
ing member, thou art not of the body." For all are members of 
the same body, Christ being the head. 

In preparing these notes for publication it occurs to me that 
this final section may strike some readers as a wholesale condemna- 
tion of both the methods employed and the results already to the 
credit of Evangelical Christianity in Latin America. Perhaps 
criticisms have not always been qualified with sufficient commenda- 
tion of that work and of the faithful men and women who have 
carried it into effect. I hope these workers will in no case feel 
aggrieved. I know their work, their sacrifices, their achieve- 

115 



ments. If strictures are implied they are not upon persons, but 
upon a system, for it has been written by a missionary who has 
given many years of his life to work through the ordinary 
methods now in use. If there has been brief mention of mis- 
sionary stations and organizations it is because in 1917 a full 
statement of these under the title of "Christian Co-operation in 
Latin America," was published and can be readily obtained. These 
observations imply that sympathetic missionary background with 
which the writer is in heartiest accord. They merely emphasize 
the necessity of cultivating personal relationships until at least 
the loyalty of some community leaders has been won to the truth 
and they have become interested in building up a religious organ- 
ization, having a voice in its direction, so that it may seem normal 
and attractive. They also affirm that the only kind of Christianity 
that will stir vision and sacrifice and prophetic fervor in these dry 
bones is a Christianity whose spiritual power is shown by its 
outward service to men in need, rather than by a mere adherence 
to doctrine. They aim as well to convey the idea that Protestant 
forces should co-operate with all forces that are honestly and 
openly working for the uplift of the people. Evangelicals gain 
nothing by being militant against Romanism. Though, of course,, 
they cannot be expected to remain silent before any reactionary 
forces that endeavor to control the state and N the public mind. 

Many of the facts set down here are deeply regrettable. It is 
regrettable that many Latin Americans do not regard religion as 
a help ; that the Roman Catholic Church in South America is 
more active in political schemes than in spiritual service; that 
the Anglo-Saxon ways are not acceptable to Latins; that many 
refuse to take for granted the good points of our religion that 
we feel sure are there. But certainly we gain nothing by ignoring 
these facts. Indeed it would seem that we need nothing more 
in the development of a constructive spiritual movement in 
South America than a frank reckoning with the facts and forces 
that are now predominant. This will be, no doubt, one of the 
important parts of the program of the Conference of Christian 
Workers proposed for 1923 in the city of Montevideo. These 
wonderful new republics of the Southland seem profoundly 
stirred by aspirations for a new and noble life. May it become 
indeed the more Abundant Life. 



116 






